New opportunities are on the horizon in relation to the use of copyrighted material by the College. The College’s existing licence with ACCESS Copyright officially expired on August 31, 2010. However, the College did sign an extension of that licence to December 31, 2010.  This will allow the College to continue providing students with paper versions of copyrighted materials covered by the ACCESS Copyright licence included in course packs and/or classroom handouts for the Fall and Winter semesters provided that the materials are ordered and printed prior to December 31, 2010.  The impending expiration of this licence with ACCESS presents the College with the opportunity to review its existing practices with regard to the ACCESS licence and the relevancy of a licence with ACCESS Copyright in light of changing student needs and technologies.

A working committee on this issue has been organized and will provide more detailed information in the next couple of weeks. Please feel free to contact the Intellectual Property Office (Leah Berkhoff) in TE1253, by phone at 5223 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any questions you may have about the ACCESS Copyright licence and/or the working committee.

An information sheet on copyright changes for all faculty and staff is accessible here

• Fair Dealing
  The federal copyright act exception of Fair Dealing (i.e. research & private study, criticism & review, and news reporting) includes activities that do not require permission of a rightsholder or payment of a licensing fee. For example, the library can make a single copy of many third party materials for a student under the ‘research & private study’ element of Fair Dealing. Placing materials on reserve may also be considered Fair Dealing if specific guidelines are adhered to.

• Issues with the proposed new ACCESS Copyright Tariff agreement
  The following list includes the most critical changes in the proposed new ACCESS Copyright Tariff agreement:
  • Significant increase in tariff cost from $3.38 to $35 per student (1000% increase)
  • Significant increase in the recordkeeping requirements of all staff (including instructors)
  • Access to the College’s servers and Learning Management System (Angel)
  • Ability to control use of third party materials that are already dealt with in legislation

Lethbridge College, along with many other post secondary institutions, is participating in a unified stand against the proposed tariff by not renewing its license.

An excerpt from the tariff details, in part, how non-renewal of our license will need to be managed:

5(4). Where the Educational Institution is no longer covered by this tariff, the Educational Institution and all Authorized Persons shall immediately cease to use all Digital Copies of Repertoire Works, delete from their hard drives, servers and networks, and make reasonable efforts to delete from any other device or medium capable of storing Digital Copies, those Digital Copies and upon written request from Access Copyright shall certify that it has done so.

The Early Childhood Education Department recently received approval to create a three-year plan for the revision of all its program courses.  This means 21 courses will move from print-based delivery to  on-line delivery. Course writers and subject matter experts were being put in place as news of the ACCESS situation was received.

For ECE, this means that at the end of the 11WN term, 322 individual print resources  must be removed and alternative sources found. What a daunting task!

At first overwhelmed with the prospect, the department decided it needed to find the experts within our Lethbridge College community for help and guidance. They  found such experts in the Buchannan Library, and have since met with Fiona and Corene to determine what the library can offer. With their help and expertise, the program has been able to determine that  Lethbridge College already has in place, a subscription for a number of electronic databases that contain a significant majority of the program’s major sources of articles,  what databases are available to it to find alternate articles, and how to efficiently search these databases. Fiona and Corene are keeping in touch and designing sessions that meet the department needs more effectively.

Although there is still quite a bit of work ahead of them, they now know the who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s and why’s. They are confident they will be ready to go for the 11SM term.

Members of the ECE Department are using this situation as a great opportunity to coordinate online and on campus courses, update both with the most current information and to utilize the superb resources already at hand in our institution.