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A Short Course in Copyright for NWACC Faculty

Need-to-Know & Best Practices

What is allowed?

Under the “fair use” provision of copyright law, a person may make limited use of another author’s work without asking permission. As noted elsewhere in this guide:

"There's no one right answer as to what constitutes a "fair use" of a particular copyrighted work. The answer varies from situation to situation."

Posting an item to Canvas does not exempt an instructor from copyright regulations. Therefore, instructors are encouraged to consult these guidelines. In order of preference, these include: 

  1. Link to your article from a library database (see below for more information on locating persistent links to articles).
  2. If a persistent link is unavailable, complete a Fair Use Evaluation and if you use is Fair Use, you scan your article and then upload it to Canvas.
  3. Repeated use of the same content over multiple semesters weighs against fair use. For repeated use, you will likely need to contact the publisher and request permission.

 

Item Probably Allowed Not allowed
Web site containing copyrighted material Link to the web site in Canvas Copying and pasting the information into Canvas
Copyrighted web image Must be educational in nature; display in Canvas for one semester Repeated use over multiple semesters
Article from a library database Direct linking to article allowed Copying and pasting the article into Canvas
Scanned copyrighted image Must be educational in nature; display in Canvas for one semester Repeated use over multiple semesters
Scanned chapter from a book

5% of the total work if in-print, 10% of the total work if out-of-print--allowed for only one semester

 More than the allotted percents or repeated use over multiple semesters
Scanned article from a journal, trade publication, or magazine A single article for one semester Multiple articles from the same publication or repeated use over multiple semesters
Audio files No more than 30 seconds without permission Repeated use over multiple semesters
Video files 10% or three minutes, whichever is less

Repeated use over multiple semesters

 

Use the Library's Research Databases

Persistent links, or permalinks, to content in library databases are always copyright compliant.

Library database companies offer persistent links, or permalinks, to their content. These are stable links that will consistently take students to a specific item in a library database, though they may be asked to login with their NWACC credentials. Our licenses with these vendors allows their content to be linked to in our learning management system.

We can also license streaming media for use in partnership with Digital Learning.