Using a digital repository for managing digital rights and copyright information

Abstract

This presentation will demonstrate how a digital repository can facilitate academics and educators publishing online material for deployment via a learning management system. It will cover the types of digital rights expression languages, copyright management issues and how to encourage your staff to publish online. The particular digital repository that will be used for this presentation is Equella, which has been developed by The Learning Edge International, an Australian based company. Equella has been implemented within half of the universities in Australia. In addition, Nanyang Technological University has been trialling Equella for much of 2007. Equella has rich integrations with Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle and other LMSs.

Equella provides a variety of digital rights management (DRM) tools to manage digital rights and copyright issues for items uploaded to the repository. DRM can be set up to manage third party copyright issues such as for purchased content. It can also track the contributor(s) of material and the moral rights owners (e.g. authors) of that material. In addition, Equella provides a copyright compliance module that manages copyright materials using the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licence framework.