Anita Heiss and Kate Vasili feature at librarian conference
June 28, 2018
The Copyright Agency, the Australian Publishers Association and the Australian Society of Authors are sponsoring the Gala Dinner at the Asia-Pacific Library and Information Conference from 30 July to 2 August 2018 on the Gold Coast.
A pre-dinner cocktail event will feature the author and academic Dr Anita Heiss and the Copyright Officer from London’s Middlesex University, Kate Vasili, who will discuss ‘Digital Transformation and Copyright’ in the University Library Sector.
For your invitation to the event, please contact: Liesl Fitzpatrick on lfitzpatrick@copyright.com.au
Attendees to the cocktail event will also hear about the Copyright Agency’s work with British company Kortext to develop a new online product called Flex, which makes the task of preparing reading material simpler and faster for librarians and lecturers.
Flex would work seamlessly with our existing licence agreement with Universities Australia, which provides use of enormous amounts of copyright material from anywhere in the world.
Flex means librarians can quickly and confidently:
- verify the copyright status of content for course packs
- search for available scans that are hosted on the shared Flex central repository
- order high quality scans directly from the British Library (over 87 million documents)
- quickly assign content to students
- save time and duplication of effort
- access data to assist libraries to make decisions around their own collections
- access Flex through existing library systems
In the UK, librarians from more than 90 universities use a similar Kortext product which has been widely praised.
Flex is currently in a trial phase in the private education sector and feedback is being sought from librarians and other educators to enhance the final version of the product.
Early feedback from test groups shows user feel more confident in using copyright-protected material ; productivity is enhanced by being able to access the material in one place and avoid duplication of effort; and the data captured helps inform collection management.
Our intention is for Flex to be offered as an inclusion in the existing university licence, for no additional fee, to those universities who want to take the product.
University licence fees are returned to the publishers and writers who create the works – and a substantial number of those are our academic members.
Please visit copyright.com.au/flex for more information, or contact Richard Hinchliffe on rhinchliffe@copyright.com.au if you are interested in participating in a Flex trial.