Materials found on the Internet are afforded the same copyright protection as print materials. This includes all text, graphics, images, sound, video, news and games available on the Internet, as well as postings to news groups and email messages. Sharing links to online materials, rather than making a copy, is the easiest way to share with students, faculty and classmates. Sharing materials directly from Library Electronic Resources is strongly encouraged, and Open Educational Resources can be a terrific (and free!) supplement to an expensive textbook.
When using online materials, you must source the work properly and link to the material in your D2L course. This ensures all materials that are shared are for educational purposes as required by Fair Dealings. When sharing articles from the Library’s Research Databases, post the article’s permalink in D2L rather than making a copy.
Before copying something found on a website (the work needs to be fully cited), you must consider the six Fair Dealing Factors and should use a legally posted copy. Content retrieved from password protected websites cannot be reproduced without consent.
The Library & Learning Commons has thousands of resources available to you and your students at no additional cost. It is free to use library resources and link them to your D2L course, however, copyright allowances still exist (please see Fair Dealings). Concurrent use of eBooks, research articles, and video streaming is available so you and your students can utilize the materials at the same time with no loans, returns, cost, or late fees to worry about.
Library resources can be legally distributed to students by posting persistent links (permalinks) in the D2L shell for that course. A permalink exists in the electronic record for most eBooks and online articles and are easily copied, shared, and can be posted in D2L, emails, Word Documents, and Microsoft Teams. Please contact copyright@lambtoncollege.ca with questions of how to find and share permalinks.
The copyright for materials contained in the databases belongs to the vendor of the database and/or the publisher of the original publication.
Do not engage in systematic or substantial printing, copying or downloading of content (e.g. entire journal issues, full books)
It is normally acceptable to:
It is not normally acceptable to:
Share Links!
The easiest and safest way to share is to share links!
Links are a means of sharing information without copying. Link to: online websites, periodicals, videos, Open Educational Resources, and Library Electronic Resources, including scholarly articles from our databases, eBooks, research tools, and video streaming (including LinkedIn Learning).
Important Facts about using links:
Using permalinks for library electronic resources has never been easier!
Don’t start digitizing your textbook or other course materials! Fair Dealings applies to all materials copied and shared online in the same ways as in-class materials. If you intended to hand out a hardcopy in class, it’s probably okay to post online in D2L (see Fair Dealing guidelines for what is allowed).
Regarding slide presentations, it is legal to share the copyright complicit, in-class slide show you had prepared in a recorded or live video lecture to your students. An explicit part of Canadian Copyright stipulates that all course material be shared in a secure, course specific LMS. In Lambton’s case, that is D2L and so, all recorded lectures, links, materials, etc., must be posted and accessible through that interface rather than any other web service.
Open educational resources (OERs) are free, accessible, electronic learning resources that make access to information easier and more cost effective to students. OERs are protected by Creative Commons licenses and are generally easily sharable with students and colleagues. You can link to whole textbooks or single chapters in your D2L course by sharing a link or putting links to the material in a word document for required or suggested reading. For more information on OERs, or for help from library staff to help source OERs, please see our Library Services for Faculty page.
We encourage you to create your own content, be it videos, an open textbook, or instructional handouts. However, since you cannot use copyrighted material, you must use copyright-free alternatives and attribute back to them. For example, if you require royalty-free music, check out Bensound. For images, you may like to check out Pixabay, and for creative posters, handouts or other documents, have a look at Canva. Also, consider searching for Creative Commons licensed materials, or items in the Public Domain. You can also consider adapting OER materials, or simply adopting them by linking to them in your D2L course.