Can a library in a government agency digitise documents it has purchased to publish on its intranet?

13.6.2009

A government library can probably do this under the government use provisions in the Copyright Act (section 183).

A library in an educational institution may also be able to do this under Part VB of the Copyright Act.

For other libraries, such as a public and corporate libraries, options include:

• circulating a list of contents with your own abstracts (rather than copies of the documents),

• getting a licence from CAL – this allows some digitisation of published materials for internal purposes. http://www.copyright.com.au/Licensing_schemes.aspx

Can I put an article or images I have downloaded from the internet onto our intranet?

15.6.2008

First check whether or not there is a statement on the site about what you are permitted or not permitted to do. If there’s no statement permitting you to put the material on an intranet, you will generally need to get permission from the owner of copyright to do so. You may be able to do this by sending an email to the general email address on the website, or to the webmaster.

There are, however, provisions that allow governments and educational institutions to do various things with copyright material, including placing that material on intranets: see our information sheets Governments, and Educational institutions.