Fair Dealing Week for 2023 may have come to an end, but my series on Canadian copyright, fair dealing, and education continues. This week’s Law Bytes podcast features Western librarian Stephen Spong on fair dealing and prior posts in the series endeavoured to set the record straight and discussed site licensing, transactional licensing, and the disappearance of course packs. Today’s post discusses the growth of open textbooks, which has flourished in recent years. That has saved students millions of dollars, provided faculty with more flexible, adaptable materials, and eliminated the need for either additional licences or a fair dealing analysis.
Post Tagged with: "open textbooks"
Ontario Government Placing Big Bet on Open Textbooks
The Creative Commons Global Summit was held in Toronto over the weekend, bringing hundreds of people together from around the world to discuss issues ranging from copyright reform to enhancing collaboration and sharing. As part of the opening of the event, David Lametti, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and Deb Matthews, the Ontario Minister for Advanced Education and Skills Development as well as the Minister for Digital Government, both provided words of welcome. Their presence demonstrated how far openness, access, and balanced copyright have come in recent years. Lametti, a leading voice on copyright as McGill law professor, emphasized the important role of balance and flexibility in the copyright system, while Matthews provided a unequivocal endorsement of openness and access.
Matthews provided more than just encouraging words, however. She used her opening remarks to promote the creation of a new Open Textbook Library for Ontario that will feature hundreds of openly licensed, professionally created textbooks providing students with access to free digital texts in dozens of university and college courses.
BC Government Launches Open Textbook Initiative
The BC government has become the first Canadian province to launch an open textbook initiative, committing to 40 new online, open textbooks for 40 popular post-secondary courses. The open texts can be freely accessed and modified and could be in use for the 2013-14 academic year.
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