Copyright 101: In the Classroom and Online

Library Databases

Under the “fair use” provision of copyright law, a person may make limited use of another author’s work without asking permission. As I note elsewhere in this guide:

"There's no one right answer as to what constitutes a "fair use" of a particular copyrighted work. The answer varies from situation to situation."

Posting an item to Moodle does not exempt an instructor from copyright regulations. Therefore, instructors are encouraged to consult these guidelines. In order of preference, these include: 

1. Link to your article from a library database (see below for more information on locating persistent links to articles).
2. If a persistent link is unavailable, complete a Fair Use Evaluation, scan your article, and then upload it to Moodle.
3. Repeated use over multiple semesters weighs against fair use. For repeated use, you will likely need to contact the publisher and request permission

Persistent Links:

If you copy a database link from your Internet browser into Moodle, that link will eventually stop working because it is a dynamic, non-static link. To eliminate this problem, most database companies now offer persistent links for their articles. Persistent links (also known as persistent URLs) are stable links that will consistently take students to a particular full-text article in a library database.

Note that to ensure access by off-campus users, all persistent links should include proxy information in the first segment of the URL:

https://login.proxy001.nclive.org/login?url=

For example, if you wanted to link to the following persistent URL (noted in bold)  from the "course documents" section of Blackboard, then it should look like this:

https://login.proxy001.nclive.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=aph&AN=37818991&site=ehost-live

Need help with this?  Just call Sara Thynne in the Library (#4208) for assistance!