by Kate Langrell, Copyright Coordinator

This week is Fair Dealing Week 2018. Fair Dealing Week is an annual event to educate and raise awareness about the many benefits of the fair dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act. This exception helps to balance the rights of copyright owners with the needs of those who use copyright-protected materials for certain purposes, including research, private study and education.

Some common, practical activities that fair dealing may cover include:

• University professors and instructors handing out a short excerpt from a book to students enrolled in their classes, without having to seek copyright clearance every time
• Students compiling resources in order to study, write papers or do projects for their coursework
• Sharing of materials between a team of researchers, facilitating collaboration

Fair Dealing Week is also key opportunity for fair dealing advocacy. The Copyright Act is being reviewed by the federal government this year, and the loss of fair dealing for educational purposes would be a considerable blow to all Canadian educational institutions.

I think that anyone who has done advocacy work is likely to tell you that advocacy is, by no means, a “quick” activity overall. With the busyness of day-to-day library work, it can easily fall by the wayside. However – if you have 10 minutes this week that can be spent offering your support for Fair Dealing, here are few quick opportunities for you:

• Sign the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUTs’) petition in support of Fair Dealing at caut.ca/petition
  • CAUT has created this petition in “support [of] preserving balance in the Copyright Act by protecting the fair dealing rights of students and educators.” (http://copyright.caut.ca/petition)
• Submit your own Fair Dealing testimonial at http://fair-dealing.ca/testimonial/
  • How has fair dealing helped you in your work, study or creative ventures? Share your story with us by e-mailing copyright.help@usask.ca, and if you would like, your testimonial can be featured on http://fair-dealing.ca/testimonial/ to demonstrate the real-life benefits of fair dealing.
• Share or post about Fair Dealing on social media
  • Check out the hashtags #fairdealing, #fairdealingweek, #faircopyright and #fairdealingworks this week to catch the fair dealing discussion, and tweet/retweet about it to your heart’s content!
  • In January 2018, CAUT launched a Twitter campaign encouraging creators to Tweet a picture of themselves (a.k.a., a selfie) with the copyright-protected work(s) that they have created, and caption it something to the effect of “I am a creator and I support #fairdealing.” If that is true of you, please consider Tweeting this @CAUT_ACPPU.