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Access Copyright Licence Overview

The intent of the Access Copyright licence is to recognize the value of copyright-protected works AND to give educators access --- without seeking permission every time --- to certain types and amounts of materials.

Holland College pays a flat fee, based on our full-time equivalent (FTE) student population, which gives us leave to make a limited number of copies from certain types of publication in certain circumstances.

Many types of paper-based materials are included: books, magazines, newspapers, and so on. Among the excluded types of materials are "consumables" such as workbooks, government publications, original art, unpublished works, and titles which are now in the public domain. Several publishers have also opted out of the license (see Exclusions List on Staff Web under Useful Documents) and one must contact them directly for permission.

The licence distinguishes between:

• ad hoc, incidental, not-for-profit copying for staff, students, administration, and inter-library loan to non-profits (see Schedule C),



• copies made for resale (see Schedule D), for example, as part of a coursepack or for distance education,



• copies made for other than non-profit institutions (for instance, through inter-library loans; see Schedule E), and
• copies made in alternate formats for staff and students who may require such formats (see Schedule F), and

Access Copyright sets different restrictions for each type of copying.

If the copies are not for sale, Holland College employees may copy up to 10% of a work or an entire part (for instance, an article or a chapter which does not exceed 20% of the entire work). You may make one copy for each student and two copies for instructor use. Reserve copies (on hold in the library on a temporary basis) are also covered under this provision. All copies must be made onto paper, with some exceptions allowed (either in the Copyright Act or in the Access Copyright licence) for transparencies or alternate formats.  The licence also states that the institution shall not engage in "systematic, cumulative copying of the same published work for a single course or program in one academic year." (Schedule C). Copies made from paper into electronic formats are tightly controlled and the electronic versions must be destroyed after a limited period of time.

If the copies are for (re)sale, you may copy up to 15% of the work, and royalties of from $.064 to $.087 cents per page must be collected and remitted to Access Copyright.

There are also special restrictions on copying for coursepacks (i.e., anthologies composed of selections from various works) from textbooks. Only up to 50% of the material in a coursepack may be taken from textbooks, and you may only copy up to 5% of a book or a single chapter, whichever is less. In addition, within any 5 year period, you may only up to two extracts from a textbook by the same author and published by the same publisher.

If you wish to make copies beyond any of these limits (or from excluded works) you must seek the permission of the copyright holder, and royalty fees may also be due. Access Copyright can assist in this regard, and our web pages on permissions may also help you to locate the appropriate publisher.

Copying that falls under the guidelines on "fair dealing"in the Copyright Act is not controlled by the licence, nor is copying or "public performance" from a variety of other formats (digital, sound, video, etc.), but remember, all original literary works are protected by Canadian and international copyright legislation.

If you would like to review the full text of the licence, please click here.