IN DEPTH
Jane Secker, Associate Professor in Educational Development at City St George’s University of London.
Chris Morrison, is Head of Copyright and Licensing the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Amanda Wakaruk, is the Head, Open Publishing and Digitization at the University of Alberta in Canada.
Understanding and tackling copyright anxiety
Jane Secker, Chris Morrison and Amanda Wakaruk look at a recent study exploring copyright anxiety and ‘legal chill’ in higher education in Canada and the UK. In this article they focus on the impact of copyright anxiety on library and information professionals and discuss mitigation strategies.
HAVE you found yourself thinking about a copyright challenge in your professional career and felt a familiar knot of tension in your stomach? Have you planned to start an exciting and innovative project only to become overwhelmed when thinking about the copyright issues?
If so, you are not alone – you have experienced copyright anxiety. And when copyright anxiety is paired with its wicked cousin copyright or legal chill it can create big problems for the information profession and those with whom we work. Read on to find out more about these phenomena and what we can do to address them (spoiler alert, it involves working together as a community).
Measuring anxiety In 2021 Amanda Wakaruk and Celine Gareau-Brenan published their research on developing, testing, and implementing a ‘Copyright Anxiety Scale,’ in the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship. Their survey instrument included 15 Likert-style (agreement response) statements, as well as three yes/no questions about whether the respondent had completed copyright instruction and/or had been hampered or prevented from doing something due to copyright concerns. Their work, which included participants from the US and Canada, defined and explored the following phenomena:
Copyright anxiety includes nervousness and appre- hension associated with navigating copyright issues.
44 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Copyright chill is where a legitimate use of copy- right-protected material is discouraged or inhibited by the threat (real or perceived) of legal action. Chris and Jane were interested in the overlap between this study and their previous research (Secker and Morrison, 2017) into librarians’ experiences with copyright. That previous research had found overwhelmingly that copyright presented itself as a professional problem to librarians. In 2022 Amanda, Jane and Chris agreed to collaborate on a follow up study to compare the situation in Canada and the UK. The legal systems in these countries are similar in important ways, including the statutory fair deal- ing exception to infringement.
However, the way copyright is cleared in higher education differs greatly. The main collective society for literary works in Canada sued a major university over tariffs, resulting in a decade-long case that was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2021. We wondered how both the decision of the court and the cultural impact of years of a collective society villainising the higher education sector might lead to differences in the way copyright was understood and navigated in the workplace. In contrast to Canada, the only significant copyright issue in UK higher education occurred over 20 years ago when the sector took the Copyright Licensing Agency to the Copyright Tribunal over the terms of the higher education licence. This has led to a relatively stable arrange- ment for the collective licensing of copying from books and journals in higher education in the UK.
Autumn 2025
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70
