Copyright Information
The information posted on this site is meant to be used as a resource for adhering to copyright law and is not intended to be legal advice. If you are unsure of your rights under the copyright law please contact a College of Charleston Reference Librarian, the Legal Affairs Office or visit the U.S. Copyright Website.
U.S. Copyright Fair Use Guidelines outlines what can be legally used in education. Below are checklists that other Universities have published to help faculty determine the copyright guidelines that they need to follow when using different copyright protected media resources in their courses.
- Baruch College’s Interactive Guide to Using Copyrighted Media in your Courses (Flash is required to view the interactive guide)
- Columbia University’s Fair Use Checklist
Online Courses
When determining what is legal to use in an online course, whether fully online or a face-to-face/online hybrid, faculty should use a combination of Fair Use and the guidelines set by the Digital Teach Act of 2002.
Alternatives to using Copyright Protected Materials
- Try linking to items publicly available on the web, unless you know or should know that it was not legally obtained.
- Take advantage of free resources available on the web for use in class or by your students. NOTE: Always read the website’s usage rules. While most of resources are royalty free, there may be some usage restrictions.
- General Resources
- Federal Resources for Education Excellence – http://free.ed.gov
- Archive.org – http://www.archive.org
- Library of Congress – http://www.loc.gov
- Merlot - http://www.merlot.org/merlot
- Creative Commons – http://search.creativecommons.org
- Images/Photos
- Free Foto - http://www.freefoto.com
- Web Gallery of Art – http://www.wga.hu
- Merlot – http://www.merlot.org/merlot
- Creative Commons – http://search.creativecommons.org
- Music
- International Music Score Library Project – http://imslp.org
- MusOpen – http://musopen.org
- Public Domain Sounds – http://www.pdsounds.org
- Books and Print Material
- University of Pennsylvania Online Books Page – http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books
- Project Gutenburg – http://www.gutenberg.org
- Video and Audio (Speeches)
- VAST Video Collection - http://www.cofc.edu/library/find/databases/index.php#v
VAST is a package of video collections, accessible through the new Academic Video Online cross-search. VAST is growing steadily and will include access to 20,000 videos in 2013 - Archive.org – http://www.archive.org
- Streamline SC (free to SC Public Schools) http://www.scetv.org/education/streamlinesc/
- VAST Video Collection - http://www.cofc.edu/library/find/databases/index.php#v
- General Resources
Assistance
The Instructional Technologists can help convert, digitize, or stream clips of multimedia works and factual or procedural media. In agreement with copyright guidelines, TLT will not:
- digitize, convert, or stream an entire video work (whether VHS or DVD)
- digitize a VHS tape when a DVD can be purchased legally
- digitize any portion of a VHS or DVD if the product has physical copyright protection
Please note: At this time, TLT does not have the ability to digitize LPs (long-playing microgroove record) or cassette tapes.
Teaching, Learning and Technology requires the following form to be completed and signed before our staff can digitize, copy or transform any work. This form MUST be completed for every DVD or VHS tape.
Please contact the Library regarding any library owned media.
