Use of literary works

What are literary works? 

A literary work means a work consisting of words that are written, spoken or sung. Literary works include books, articles, short stories, poems, song lyrics, and other works created in descriptive text, graphics, or plastic form, as well as computer programs.

[CRRA Sec. 2]

Use of literary works in education

You are free to use: 

• Information, data, ideas, principles, theories.
• Works whose copyright term has expired.
• Laws, regulations, and government publications.
• Quotations in accordance with good practice.

With a copying licence from ICLA, you can: 

• Copy, digitise, print and share extracts of printed and digital publications within a school/college. 
• Copy, print and share text and still image materials from the internet within a school/college.

With the author’s permission, you can:

• Use materials that the author has allowed to be used with an open licence, such as a Creative Commons (CC) licence.
• Use materials from anywhere by directly seeking permission from the rightsholder. Note the author may have granted exclusive licence to use their work to a publisher so the permission of that rightsholder will also be required.

Use as illustration for teaching if no licence is available: 

• If a licence is not available (for example if a work has been excluded from ICLA’s copying licence) extracts from a published work can be copied and used for illustrative purposes for education under the educational exception.
• However, this exception does not apply to sheet music.

Public performance 

Copyright law allows literary works to be freely performed within an educational setting. For example, a teacher or a student can read from a book or a poem in class. 

[CRRA Sec. 55]

You are also free to display physical copies of works such as books. For example, a teacher can show images from a book during a lesson. If you want to copy images or parts of the book to include in your own teaching material, permission is required. Most schools have an ICLA copying licence, which allows you to copy and scan excerpts from works for educational purposes in accordance with the licence terms. A teacher can also project websites on the wall or whiteboard and display online resources, such as images.

Linking

You are allowed to link directly to materials that have been legally uploaded to the internet, i.e., with the rights holder’s permission. A teacher can place a link in their own resources or on a virtual learning platform through which students can access the page where the original material is located. You can also embed legally available online material in your own resources or on a virtual learning platform, unless content embedding is prevented or prohibited.