Skip to Main Content

Copyright Center for CPS Online (UNH Manchester Library): Copyright Basics

The Educator's Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons - excellent site for easily learning about the details of copyright.

What is Covered Under Copyright

Most content – articles, books, unpublished manuscripts, tables, figures, photographs – is owned (copyrighted) by someone. There are laws and policies that affect reuse of such content for any purpose, such as putting material on the Web for a course, or reusing it in another work..

Copyright may be an issue when using:

Journal articles, or excerpts from them
Books, or excerpts from them
Databases and electronic journals
Musical works, scores, lyrics, and sound recordings
Pictorial/graphic works, art, sculpture, photographs
Audiovisual works, motion pictures, videos, video games
Computer software

Is the Resource Under Copyright?

This is a question that often comes up when using resources. Resources are copyrighted as soon as they are produced in a fixed tangible form. You may see a copyright notice placed on the resource. However, a copyright notice is no longer legally required to secure copyright on works first published on or after March 1, 1989. For that reasons always assume a resource is under copyright regardless of the presence or absence of a copyright notice

What is NOT Under Copyright

The following resources are generally not under copyright:

MOST publications of the US Government
Published works for which copyright has expired or does not apply, i.e. works in the Public Domain

Link to Things on the Web, or Use Permalinks for Library Resources

Faculty frequently ask about adding articles or e-books they find via the GSC library databases directly into their online classes. Copying and pasting the article is generally a violation of copyright and our lease agreement with Ebsco. What you can do instead is create a permalink directly from the article, and copy it into your online class. Students will then simply click on the permalink and be taken directly to the article. Here is how you do it:

Search for the article or e-book you want to use via the GSC Discovery Service
Once you find the article, open it by clicking on the PDF or HTML version of the article
Along the right navigation are a series of article tools - the Chain Link is the permalink tool.Click on it
Above the article will appear a field with the Chain Link and label Permalink. In the field will be the permalink
Copy it and place the link in your online class as a regular Moodle link
Students can now click on the link and access the article

Faculty often use scholarly articles, newspaper articles, and related information we find on the web. The temptation is always to put the information directly into our online Canvas course. In many cases this is a violation of copyright. What to do? Use a permalink or link whenever possible. Here's how:

Find an article or text you want to use - below is an example from the New York Times
Use the Share and Permalink to link the article from the NYTimes to your course

NOTE: Each time you teach the course verify that the permalink is still working

The Share option is available on many web and video text resources, but not all. Bets practices is to simply link to the page using the page's web address (URL). You must check the efficacy of the link each term, realizing that the links breaking is always a possibility.