There is a wealth of information on this page!

Click on the links below to jump directly to a section:

Fair dealing offers some exceptions to the Copyright Act's general prohibition on copying.

Fair dealing allows limited and non-commercial copying for the purposes of:

• research
• private study
• education
• parody
• satire
• criticism
• review
• or news reporting

In Canada, fair dealing as defined by the Copyright Act is more restrictive than the fair use provisions in the United States, particularly in regards to education and teaching.

For more information, see:

For questions related to library licensed materials, please contact:

library.licensequeries [at] utoronto.ca

For other inquiries, please contact:

Bobby Glushko, U of T Libraries
copyright [at] library.utoronto.ca

Caitlin Tillman, U of T Libraries,
caitlin.tillman [at] utoronto.ca

Pam Gravestock, Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation, 
p.gravestock [at] utoronto.ca

For Additional Help:

Links related to copyright recommendations and agreements at the University of Toronto.

Copyright and scholarly communications issues are increasingly important to the University’s mission, with implications for the research, teaching and learning activities of every member of the university community. The Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office is here to support you as you strive for continuing excellence in these areas.  

In the Library Catalogue we have added Permitted Usage Information for many of our online titles.

To see it:

• Search for a book or journal

• Select 'Permitted Uses' or scroll down the page.

• Click the 'yes/no/ask' button to get you additional information and/or an email address  to ASK about permitted uses

First you take a look for each online journal or book in the catalogue to see if the Permitted Uses are clearly stated for that resource.

If they ARE NOT you can:

-Go to the journal publisher’s web page. Look for the word Permissions or Clearances or even Contact Us.
-Send them a message asking for copyright clearance, in your message:

• give them full article details (author, title, journal, volume, page)
• ask for copyright clearance to post a pdf (or other format) of the article and/or use the article for a printed course pack
• tell them where (e.g. in Blackboard, on an open web site) and whether the site is password protected
• tell them how many students are in the class or how many people will be accessing the web site.

Some publishers provide clearances free of charge, some do not.

If you have questions about obtaining copyright, please contact your liaison librarian.

...is a nonprofit organization

covering the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing. 

...provides free, easy-to-use tools

a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.

Check the CC webpages below for more info...

The following describes each of the six main licenses offered when you choose to publish your work with a Creative Commons license.

They are listed starting with the most accommodating license type you can choose, and ending with the most restrictive license type you can choose.

License Conditions

Creators choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work.

Attribution

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

Share Alike

You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Noncommercial

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

More information about these licenses and how you can share/protect your work: