COVID-19 made everyone distant – not just socially, but also as learners, researchers, readers, workers and more.
Thanks to technology, at the technical level, this was far less disruptive for education, research, cultural participation and more than it might have been. COVID-19 made everyone distant even in these fields.
But it also became clear that what was technically possible in fact was not always possible in terms of the law. .
For example, teachers could scan in books for their students, or eBooks only available in national libraries under eLegal Deposit could have been supplied to students and researchers when all the libraries were shut, but copyright law prevented it.
This question – how far the copyright regime we have today enables remote access to and use of the collections of public interest institutions (such as libraries) – is at the heart of a project commissioned by the European Parliament a couple of years ago, and now being implemented by a consortium led by Visionary Analytics.
They currently have a series of surveys open, looking to understand the lived experience of public interest institutions and users, as well as of governments and rightsholders.
We were happy to welcome Audrone Sadauskaite to a webinar last Friday, 5 July 2024, to explain the project as a whole, and in particular the surveys. You can access the recording here – or below.
You can access the surveys themselves at the links below. You can share these around with colleagues (the more answers received, the more useful the data will be). The deadline for the surveys is 15 August 2024:
As the survey itself underlines, answers are particularly welcome from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia and Sweden. However, other responses are welcome.
In order to help you plan your answers, we are happy to make available our best effort to put the full surveys into a document. These may not include all the potential questions (some of which only appear depending on answers to previous ones), but hopefully make it easier.
In these, you will also see notes from us (with a blue background) that we hope provide helpful background information, although, of course, you should answer in line with your experience:
As highlighted, please do share these surveys with others – the resulting research is likely to be highly influential in shaping the policy agenda in the European Union in the years to come!
Webinar Recording
10 July 2024
