News

Copyright: Enabling Access or Creating Roadblocks for Libraries? 13-14 November 2008

This ia a joint conference co-organised by eIFL, IFLA and EBLIDA.

The local organisation is by our colleagues in eIFL Direct Moldova. For more details, click here.

Scientific Information Management: annual conference of Croatian academic and scientific libraries 24-25 October 2008

Teresa Hackett, Programme Manager eIFL-IP, will speak on "Croatian Copyright Law: the Impact of International Treaties and European Law". More information at: http://nippur.irb.hr/szi_2008/eng/szi_program.htm

Road-testing ahead: new copyright course scrutinised by librarians from eleven countries

Associates at the Mortensen Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are road-testing the first modules of a new copyright course for librarians during September and October 2008. The course is under development by eIFL and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The Mortenson Associates come from Colombia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Colombia, Palestine, Bahrain, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. Read more here

Teresa Hackett delivers the 18th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture

Teresa Hackett, eIFL-IP Programme Manager, will deliver the 18th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs on 17th September 2008.

The Mortenson Center seeks to strengthen international ties among libraries and librarians, regardless of geographic location or access to technology. Over 700 librarians from 89 countries have already taken advantage of programming through the Mortenson Center - the only one of its kind in the world.

The 2008 lecture is entitled "Libraries Advocating for Access to Knowledge: our role in the global A2K movement".

For more details and an abstract of the lecture, click here

eIFL.net interviewed by ccLearn

In April, eIFL.net was interviewed by Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director of ccLearn, a division of Creative Commons dedicated to realizing the
full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER).
Rima Kupryte, eIFL.net Director and Iryna Kuchma, Program Manager of eIFL-OA (Open Access) discussed open access, open education and the
common goals of eIFL and Creative Commons.
Read the interview here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8247

Many countries, one goal: Access to Knowledge

Advocacy for Access to Knowledge: copyright and libraries. eIFL-IP global conference, Istanbul, Turkey, 4-5 April 2008

Participants from forty eIFL member countries spent two days updating their knowledge and sharing experiences on the policy and practice of copyright law. The first day focused on practical issues faced by librarians in their daily work, such as copyright and library services and the role of copyright in digitisation projects. The second day looked at international policy issues and advocacy.

Read more Press release

Winners announced: "Copyright for Librarians: a Distance Learning Course"

In October 2007, we began the search for a name for the eIFL-Berkman library copyright course that would accurately describe the different elements: it’s about copyright, from the perspective of libraries, it’s a training course and it’s delivered remotely. We received lots of creative and thoughtful acronyms and descriptive titles from eIFL members and colleagues. After much mulling over, we went back to basics with the motto “simple is best”. The title selected is "Copyright for Librarians: a Distance Learning Course".

We offered to send an eIFL A2K t-shirt and the complete course on CD-ROM to whoever made the selected proposal. In the end, the final version came from a brainstorming at the Berkman Center involving all the ideas, a real collaborative creation! So, we will award our fabulous prizes to Diana Sayej-Naser from West Bank, Palestine and Irina Razumova from Russia whose suggestions closely matched the selected title.

The course will be available in September 2008 in online and offline formats. The purpose of the course is to provide a general, accurate, non-legalese overview of copyright law that supports the library mission and answers questions faced by librarians. The modules will be licensed under an open content licence and we will encourage other communities to re-use it, translate and build upon it. The methodology will be participative and interactive and it will be fun to follow.

Thank you to everyone who contributed and congratulations to Diana and Irina!

New grants for eIFL-IP

eIFL-IP receives grants from the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
eIFL.net is pleased to announce that it has been awarded new grants by two prestigious Foundations that seek to improve lives and create opportunity in countries around the globe.

Press release

Congratulations to Macedonia!

On 19 June 2007, Macadonia became the 38th country to launch a Creative Commons licence for their jurisdiction. Two more eIFL.net countries are progressing with their porting projects: Serbia and Egypt.

Congratulations to Macedonia in joining the growing Creative Commons family that enables sharing of knowledge and creative works over the internet!

Read more about Creative Commons.

Available in Polish: eIFL-IP copyright handbook

eIFL-IP Rzecznictwo w sprawie dostepu do wiedzy: prawo autorskie a biblioteki.
We are pleased to announce that the Polish version of the eIFL-IP Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues is available. Not only has the text been translated into Polish, but the legal situation in Poland for each topic has been added. This makes it a particularly valuable resource for librarians in Poland.

Thank you to Jan Andrzej Nikisch, country coordinator from the Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries for supporting the work and Barbara Szczepanska for the excellent work in the translation and adaptation to the Polish legal situation.

Available in html and pdf.

Copyright & visually impaired people - WIPO study published

The WIPO study on the relationship between copyright law and the needs of blind and visually impaired people has been published. The study examined national copyright laws, analysed the rules that govern the transfer of accessible material for blind and visually impaired people between jurisdictions, presented multiple case studies from developed and developing countries and made recommendations on ways of addressing identified problems.

Copyright provisions for the benefit of visually impaired people in a wide range of eIFL countries were analysed. eIFL assisted in the identification of national case studies and features in the case study on Lesotho. Thank you to eIFL colleagues who provided information for the study, which we hope will move the debate on exceptions and limitations forward at WIPO.

See Blind and visually impaired people and copyright

eIFL Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues travels the world

The eIFL Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries, launched in January, has been mailed far and wide and has been pressed into the hands of copyright officials from Argentina to Zimbabwe. It sits on a library shelf in Ghana, has been catalogued in Lithuania and has inspired a course for students on library copyright issues in Zambia. Our allies are keen to read it too; it is featured in the February newsletter of the European library association (EBLIDA).

Translations into Russian and Polish (annotated for the Polish legal context) are underway.

The complete Handbook, as well as the individual topics, is available for download on the eIFL website. See eIFL-IP Issues and Campaigns

eIFL-IP Advisory Board member receives award

The eIFL-IP Advisory Board held its first meeting in Geneva in February 2007 with a wide-ranging discussion on the achievements of eIFL-IP, the challenges and the opportunities ahead. Special attention was paid to training and capacity building, including how to develop regional hubs and to strengthen regional support. Growing the Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement in key countries of strategic importance in the global IP debate was also a topic for discussion.

Under wraps on the day of the meeting was the announcement that Advisory Board member Winston Tabb, Dean of University Libraries at John Hopkins University, is this year’s recipient of the American Library Association (ALA) International Relations Committee’s award to an individual for significant contribution to international librarianship. Winston received the award for his focus on issues relating to increasing global access to information, particularly in parts of the world where access has been limited.

eIFL extends its congratulations to Winston and is proud that we can count internationally acclaimed professionals amongst our friends and supporters.

Press release: http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2007/february2007/HumpryOCLCForestPress.htm

The WIPO development agenda inches forward “pa russki”!

We have been reporting for almost two years, and 20 days negotiation, on a development agenda for WIPO. With no agreement on the 111 proposals, member states were sent back to the negotiating table once more to hammer out an agreement. The first meeting took place in February to discuss the “low hanging fruit” i.e. less contentious proposals.

Progress was made! After five days, the proposals were accepted, including items of importance to eIFL, on the public domain and control of anti-competitive practices. These came under pressure from some countries, especially Colombia, which attempted to spoil the occasion by recording a formal objection in the final agreement. However, as a senior member of the US delegation said, “We sensed a different atmosphere on both sides this time”.

Much credit to the spirit of cooperation goes to the new chairman, the Ambassador of Barbados to the UN, who displayed the qualities of a true diplomat: a determination to get the sides talking to each other, a tough, business-like approach to negotiations coupled with a great sense of humour.

Iryna Kuchma from Ukraine joined the eIFL team, delivering the first ever library intervention in Russian. This was a pleasant surprise for the Russian-speaking delegates who rarely hear NGO interventions in Russian, and enabled eIFL to reach out to government representatives from this part of the world.

The next meeting in June will seal the fate of the development agenda. This will be much tougher, however, because the rest of the proposals are more contentious and many are opposed by the industrialised countries. But the upbeat conclusion of the February meeting gave everyone a sense of optimism for June.

“As [the Indian] delegation, we feel it is a very significant forward movement. The meeting concluded in a spirit of compromise and consensus. This augurs well for future deliberation which may lead to the finalisation of a development agenda for WIPO. It is imperative that member states maintain this spirit in the next meeting of the PCDA”.

New resources for 2007

eIFL Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries

The eIFL Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries has recently been launched. Sponsored by the UNESCO Information for All Programme, this is a practical guide to topical legal questions affecting the information work of libraries in the fast moving digital environment. Each topic is described briefly, the main policy aspects for libraries are outlined, and there are links to library policy statements for further reading.

The topics are the Relationship between Copyright and Contract Law: Electronic Resources and Library Consortia; Technological Protection Measures - the "triple lock"; Copyright, the Duration of Protection and the Public Domain; Orphaned works; Collective Rights Management; Public lending right; the Database Right - Europe's Experiment; Creative Commons: an "open content" licence; Open Access to Scholarly Communications; Copyright and Trade Agreements; International Policy Making: a Development Agenda for WIPO; National Policy Making: Advocating for Fair Copyright Laws.

We encourage re-use and translation. The complete Handbook, as well as the individual topics, are available for download on the eIFL website at eIFL-IP Issues and Campaigns. Hard copies are available on request from the Program Manager <teresa.hackett[at]eifl.net>.

A new Advisory Board for eIFL-IP

After two years, eIFL-IP has established itself as a serious activist organisation. To provide guidance on future policy, advocacy and strategy and to ensure that eIFL-IP remains focused and effective, an Advisory Committee has been established with expertise in strategy, development, copyright and libraries. The members of the Advisory Board are:

• James Love, Director CPTech, Washington DC
• Sisule Musungu, Coordinator of the Innovation, Access to Knowledge and Intellectual Property programme, South Centre, Geneva
• Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland) and Chair of the IFLA Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM)
• Professor Ruth Okediji, William L. Prosser Professor of Law, University of Minnesota, USA

The Board will meet in Geneva in February 2007. In the meantime, we welcome comments and suggestions on policy, strategy or activities and any ways in which we can improve our service.

What’s in store for 2007?

Following a busy year in 2006, which saw the completion of the regional training programme, attendance at key strategic conferences, participation in inter-governmental meetings at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and consultations as well as the provision of legal advice to eIFL member countries, we are looking forward to an exciting programme ahead in 2007.

eIFL-IP will continue to focus on capacity building and in providing support to the eIFL-IP copyright expert network. We will provide tools and resources to build and strengthen national policy positions and participation by national experts in national and regional events. We will continue to have a visible presence at WIPO, especially for discussions on a development agenda and the proposed treaty for the protection of broadcast organisations, both of which will be decided in 2007. We have also been invited to take part in a project to explore compulsory licensing for educational materials, which could potentially be of enormous benefit to libraries and education.

A warm thank you to the eIFL-IP network for their cooperation and support in 2006 and we look forward to a productive new year!