DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES: A COPYRIGHT LAW APPROACH

Abstract

Digital technology gives libraries an excellent opportunity to improve their services. It also provides new ways of preservation and dissemination of library collections. But the different stages of digitisation of the materials in a library involve many copyright issues. There are legal problems and purely practical ones such as locating the owner of copyright. Librarians need to take note of these problems and explore possible solutions. This paper attempts to focus attention on the major copyright problems involved in digitisation of library collections.