Evidence of meeting #114 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was works.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Fair enough. Can you give me your totals from 2002 and then your totals now?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
It was $11,947,482 in fiscal year 2002-03, and it was $16,896,011 in—
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Okay.
On the digital you showed us, it's reversed at 20% and 80% of—
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
Right. We buy content to support the teaching and learning at UBC, and increasingly it's become digital.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Can you break it down by how much of it is from Canadian publishers versus international or non-Canadian publishers?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
This is what I have tried to do, based on the questions in the past. We were going to try to use something in the MARC record to try to do that, but I need a bit more time on that analysis.
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
This digital disruption has also affected libraries, because most of our processes were for when information was scarce. Now that information isn't scarce in the digital age, all of our processes have changed too.
If I have a little bit more time with your analysts, we can give them some data on that.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Sure. Can you also submit, if you have it readily available, the academic journal versus generalized acquisitions? Do you have that breakdown?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
That will be tougher, but yes, we can give that a shot too.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Okay.
Can you or Ms. Parker share your experience vis-à-vis open access and the development of open educational resources at UBC?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
We've been tracking that in the context of the bookstore as well. In their analysis, they think that about $500,000 has become open access, and therefore it's not revenue for the bookstore anymore. The university tracks that on a site called Open UBC. They estimate that UBC students saved $4.7 million to around $6 million last year in the adoption of open learning materials.
There's a lot more data on that site that might be of interest to you as well.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
I have a first-year student at university. He bought a book and he had a course pack. He's also online using a lot of material. I told him I was doing a study on copyright, and I asked him if he'd been taught how to respect the copyright laws.
How do you go about ensuring that the students, or the instructors, for that matter, when they're using the printed course pack or the electronic course pack when they are doing their homework, etc., are not breaking copyright laws?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
That's a tough question, because piracy is generally not just a student problem or an educational problem. I think it's a broader societal problem. It's people who download Game of Thrones or use a proxy to try to get different content.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Have you had cases where you've had to reprimand an instructor? What was the process?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
Everything is funnelled through the scholarly communication and copyright office. If there is something, I send it to the provost's office.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
How do you detect if an instructor or student is not in compliance?
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
Often people will write us questions, and we will help guide them and say, “That's not the right way to do it. This is the right way to do it.” The copyright librarians actually answer a lot of questions from faculty to try to guide them in the right way.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
So there is really no oversight or monitoring system. It's basically self-initiated by either the student or the instructor.
Associate University Librarian, University of British Columbia
Arguably, notice and notice is an oversight system. We do deal with that in the copyright office. When people get a notice and notice we work with them on that. We have been doing education and support. We're looking at the ramifications of York versus Access Copyright right now. I think it's inevitable that we start talking about how to proactively monitor more than we have in the past.
We've been trying to get people to use our e-reserve systems, where we do all of this work for them so that they don't have to worry about it at all, but you're right; it's one of those things where I think we will have to go into more monitoring, as the original AUCC guidelines outlined.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Ms. Nayyer, can you help me understand how law libraries collect material differently from other libraries in terms of digital format or real content?
Co-Chair, Copyright Committee, Canadian Association of Law Libraries
Again, it will vary quite a bit with the particular type of law library. I work in an academic law library. I actually forgot to mention that I also oversee the copyright and scholarly communications office. Many of our materials are licensed. For legal materials, it's quite interesting, because when we exited the Access Copyright agreement, we found in our review that many of the resources that were used in the legal program, the law school, were not actually covered in the Access Copyright repertoire, so we were paying for materials and paying for licences when we weren't actually using those materials. Again, many of the resources we acquire in law libraries across the board are public domain as well. They might be very old cases or they might be legislation that we're licensed to use, by a province or the federal government, for example, in the reproduction of federal law order.
Generally when we acquire resources in print or digitally, our print resources are primarily Canadian books. There is actually very little course pack creation continuing where I work. The course packs that have been used generally contain copies of cases or excerpts of case law. We also have a number of electronic licences, and this is where things are getting challenging for us. Some of the licences that are presented to us actually deny us the ability to lend a few pages to another organization that might be missing that content from a print version of the same resources, for example. We do also have some technological protection measures now embedded in the digital resources themselves that make it a bit more difficult for us to link to those.
Generally speaking, the University of Victoria uses systems that are similar to those at UBC in any case, which I can speak personally to, in that we use an e-reserve system. Our copyright librarian does a road show like the one you're doing. She goes to different faculties and gives educational sessions periodically, and also produces written materials and guidelines. Periodically there will also be random audits of the learning management system to ensure that what is posted there matches what's in the e-reserve system and meets the fair dealing guidelines that we have published.