From anxiety to empowerment: supporting librarians develop copyright literacy

Copyright is a subject that increasingly has a major impact on the library and information profession, particularly as librarians create, preserve and provide access to digital collections. However, it is a subject that many librarians shy away from providing advice about. In higher education most universities now employ a copyright officer or nominate someone to be the copyright specialist to deal with queries of this nature. While it is highly valuable to build up expertise in the many complexities of copyright, this approach can create a gulf between library staff and the specialist copyright officer. The consequences are that many librarians feel justified in passing on their queries to their dedicated specialist and don’t build up their knowledge and understanding in this field. In this short article we present emerging findings from an exploratory study to examine librarians’ experiences of copyright in their professional lives.