Building Understanding, Building Confidence: Interview with Chris Morrison on the University of Kent’s Copyright Literacy Strategy

Copyright can all too often seem complicated, scary, or both. Yet having a sense of what it does, and does not permit can help avoid accidental infringements, as well as preventing situations where library users do not take full advantage of the possibilities open to them. Chris Morrison, at the University of Kent in the […]

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Library Stat of the Week #13: Globally, 94.6% of documents borrowed from academic libraries are digital

In last week’s Library Stat of the Week, we looked at eLending in public and community libraries, both in terms of loans per user, and the relationship with physical lending. This underlined that while eLending continued to represent only a relatively small share of total lending – arguably due in part to the conditions under […]

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Buy, Borrow or Both? What the Boersenverein’s Survey of eLending Does and Doesn’t Tell Us

Last year, the German book industry organisation – the Boersenverein – published research commissioned from GfK on library eLending, including comparative analysis between physical and eBook buyers and borrowers as regards their age, situation, and habits. This has been promoted by the Boersenverein as evidence that library eLending harms publishing, and that there is no […]

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Fail! How Copyright Risks Creating Market Failures, and How Exceptions Can Correct Them

At the end of a recent WIPO meeting, a suggestion was made that the Marrakesh Treaty – which removes the need to seek permission in order to make or share accessible format copies of books – was a response to a market failure. Market failures happen when the impacts of a decision (to do something […]

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Day for Universal Access to Information: Libraries, Freedom, and the US Law

Why US Courts consider public library as the “quintessential locus” of information in a free and democratic society. By Tomas Lipinski (Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) Anyone following recent library developments is the United States is likely to have seen legislative efforts in various states to restrict access to LGBTQIA+ or […]

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