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Access Copyright updates governance structure to reflect support for educational content users

access_copyright_logoFor the first time, Access Copyright, Canada’s copyright licensing agency, has added representatives from outside the content-creation and publishing sectors to its board of directors.

According to Access Copyright executive director Roanie Levy, the new governance structure better reflects the agency’s updated mandate to broaden its services supporting readers, researchers, educators, and other users of copyrighted content.

“The expectation is that we’ll continue to have people from writing and publishing on the board, but also directors that come from various other sectors,” says Levy. “It could be from the education or corporate sector, and from other industries as well.”

At a spring 2013 summit discussing Access Copyright’s future direction, members voted unanimously to change the makeup of its 18-person board of directors, which was previously split between nine member-nominated publishers and nine content creators representing visual artists and writers. In its place, it was decided that a committee would select a smaller board of 11 members, based on skillsets and industry experience.

Given the challenges Access Copyright has experienced with its educational partners, it’s not surprising that the institutions are well represented on the new board, which was voted in unanimously in April. The four new members are: author, former teacher, and Cape Breton University electronic resources librarian Nicole Dixon; retired Malaspina University-College/Vancouver Island University director of library services Bob Foley; former K–12 school-board head and Canadian Education Association president and CEO Ron Canuel; and, representing the digital industry, Fantan Group president and CEO Tyl van Toorn.

They join Levy and six current members: Canadian Science Publishing executive director Cameron Macdonald; Irwin Law founding publisher Jeff Miller; former McGraw-Hill Ryerson president and CEO David Swail; National Reading Campaign executive director Sandy Crawley; and writers Katherine Lawrence and Michael Elcock.

Access Copyright was originally established to oversee licensing and ensure that publishers and content creators are paid when copyrighted works are used. Levy says the revised mandate “really brings into the mix the common interests that creators and publishers have with the users of the content itself. We’re moving beyond licences to servicing the needs of educational institutions around content and copyright clearance.”

Levy says the agency is currently running several pilot programs with post-secondary institutions, offering a service that allows, for example, a professor to directly search a repository of publishers and content from the university’s website and immediately determine the copyright status of available materials. The system also provides options to clear copyright and permissions, and determine usage costs, where necessary. Levy says, “There are lots of moving pieces that need to be stitched together to allow that kind of seamless discovery and access of clearance of the rights of the content.”