eReserves, Moodle, Coursepacks - Choices for Faculty

Fair dealing and other provisions of the Copyright Act allow for the copying and sharing of limited amounts of copyrighted material for research and educational use. Our Fair Dealing Guidelines page provides more information on how to determine if your use is fair dealing. With this in mind, the Library offers several services that facilitate this kind of use; courseware (Moodle) can also be used for this type of use.

Courseware (Moodle)

Since linking invokes no copying issues, it is generally preferrable for instructors to provide links to electronic journal articles in Moodle rather than uploading PDFs (copies). Many of the Library's journal databases allow for such direct linking (directions are available for how to do this). For those that do not, please consult your liaison librarian, who can determine if we have a licence that allows for posting PDFs to Moodle.

If linking is not possible and we do not have a licence to post PDFs, faculty members may make electronic copies to post to Moodle, but must respect the principles of fair dealing.

To get material into Moodle you can scan documents and upload into your Moodle course. If possible use your department Ricoh to scan documents; ask the ITSS Helpdesk for help uploading to Moodle. You may also want to refer to the Copyright and Moodle page. You can also work with the Library staff to load them into e/Reserve and thereby into your Moodle course.

Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery

Interlibrary loan services provides copies of material either for permamenent retention by the user or for a short-term loan. Requests will be filled 95% of the time and the material can be used in your learning and research activities.

In a few cases (e.g. copying multiple articles from the same journal issue) fair dealing does not apply and the option is to seek permission from the author and/or publisher. The Library can assist you with this.

Library Reserves and eReserves

The Library provides both traditional Reserves (physical items are placed on a reserve shelf) and eReserves (digital items or links to those items are provided in a secured online system) to give access to learning and research materials. Reserve and eReserve are identical in terms of copyright and what you need to consider, so we refer to them here as e/Reserve where it applies to both.

A published work can be placed on Reserve (e.g. a complete book), since this invokes no copying issues. Copies may be placed on e/Reserve, but all copying must comply with the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright Act. Material placed on e/Reserve is immediately accessible in the course Moodle presence. The use of e/Reserves can be an effective way to provide students with access to materials.

More detail on how to get material into e/Reserve is available.

Coursepacks

Coursepacks are traditional printed collections of course material, often sold in the University bookstore. Wherever possible, online linking via Moodle and/or Library eReserve are greatly preferrable to print coursepacks. Where there is no alternative, however, the Library and UPEI Central Printing will work in cooperation to obtain coursepack clearances. More information is available on how to create a coursepack.

 

Other Considerations

  • $$$ Copyright royalty costs: Material owned by the Library may not need any copyright payments in eReserves or Moodle; most materials will require special copyright royalty payments to make copies in coursepacks
  • Usage: Instructors can track which students have accessed which materials if they are loaded in Moodle
  • Student convenience: coursepacks cost money; eReserves and Moodle are free and documents are accessible from Internet-capable device - computer, smartphone, etc.
  • Speed: use your departmental copier to scan a document, then upload it to Moodle in minutes; eReserves can take days to process and coursepacks can take weeks to clear copyright
  • Technical help: Library staff will scan materials for eReserves for you; with Moodle, you do the scanning yourself

 

 

 

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