51³Ô¹ÏÍø

UK Copyright Law contains an exception 'Illustration for instruction'. This enables you to use small amounts of copyrighted content in your slides and other teaching materials without requesting permission from the copyright holder.

To be able to defend your use of copyrighted content as illustration for instruction your copying must be:

• for instruction or preparing instruction
• fair to the copyright holder
• non-commercial (e.g. teaching 51³Ô¹ÏÍø students)
• the extract must be fully cited and referenced

A publisher’s contract cannot override this exception.

51³Ô¹ÏÍø has a Copyright Licensing Agency Higher Education Licence. This enables:

• lecturers and course administrators to provide each student with a single printed copy of a journal article or a book chapter, if it is part of the Library’s collection

and

• Library Services to make a digital copy of a journal article or a book chapter, that is part of the Library's collection, available to students on your VLE

The licence does not include permission to make copies publicly available on the internet.

To check if a book or journal title is covered by the licence use the CLA’s .

Use Leganto reading lists to request a digital reading for your students.

If you use content from the internet, your use is dictated by UK Copyright Law and the licence displayed on the website, usually in the Terms of use in the footer.

51³Ô¹ÏÍø's licences do not cover this use.

A legal copyright exception () allows you to show students TV programmes, films and videos for educational reasons, for example during a lecture or as a separate educational screening. The exception does not extend to format shifting a DVD for online streaming on a virtual learning environment, such as Blackboard, Moodle or Insendi.

The safest way to show students TV and film is to use , which provides legal on-demand TV and radio, including films, for universities to use in educational activities. If you are unable to find what you want here, see FAQ How should I ask students to watch a film for their course?.

Do not provide links to pirate copies on file servers or illegal uploads on YouTube, as this puts you and 51³Ô¹ÏÍø at risk. You may also find that the film or TV clip may have disappeared when the student wants to watch the film.

Some images are free to use and others are of high commercial value because they belong to professional photographers and stock photography companies such as Shutterstock and Getty images. 

Photographers and stock photography agencies make their living by selling images and will therefore bill you for unauthorised use of their images. Before copying and pasting an image into your online course module or conference slides, always read the copyright and licensing information within the image metadata and read the website’s terms of use.

The safest images to use in teaching materials are images that are:

• your own
• licensed for education use
• licensed with a Creative Commons Licence

or those for which you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder or paid for a licence to use the image.

You can  to check for permission to reuse images from books and journals in our collections.

51³Ô¹ÏÍø's licences do not include permission to make images available on the internet.

See the Intellectual Property Office for detailed guidance.

 Easy to reuse images  

When searching the internet, it can be hard to know which images are safe to reuse and which are not and checking the reuse terms of each image can be time-consuming.

It is better to start your search within image collections that you know are licensed for easy reuse, for example, those that license images with Creative Commons Licences or permit educational reuse of their content. Below are some suggestions but it is a good idea to build up your own list of favourite image sites for use in lecturers and conference presentations.

Remember to acknowledge an image’s creator. See How do I acknowledge images? 

Images of 51³Ô¹ÏÍø

51³Ô¹ÏÍø Digital Image Library

General images

- searches Google, Flickr and Pixabay for CC licensed images

- search free images, avoid Getty istock

- search, then use advanced filters to see only Creative Commons images

- free photos, avoid stock images

- Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensed images

– see 

Subject specific image collections

(scientific images) - licensed under a .

(medical images) - many Creative Commons licensed images but check individual image metadata

(space) - noncommercial educational and informational use – see

and other (scientific images) - educational use of most images but check individual image metadata

(medical diagrams) - diagrams are licensed under a

(art and design images) - non-commercial education reuse – see

For online newspaper articles, provide a link or follow the advice for web based materials.

51³Ô¹ÏÍø has a Basic Newspaper Licensing Agency Licence. This covers all UK national newspapers and permits 51³Ô¹ÏÍø staff to make a cutting (article, report, photos and artistic works) available to students in print (max 250 copies), and, for some titles, a digital cutting on a VLE.

 or the Central Secretariat if you have questions about this licence.

You may scan a small section of a printed map (A4 or less) and use it in your teaching materials.

For online maps please refer to the licence or terms of use and display any copyright notices requested by the supplier.

You should only play music tracks in a lecture for a teaching purpose, not for entertainment or to create an atmosphere.

In lecture recordings and pre-recorded teaching materials keep your copying fair by shortening the tracks to what is essential to make your teaching point. This will prevent your copies from competing with commercially available copies.

Where students need to listen to whole tracks, in their own time, direct them to a service where they can legally listen to it or download a copy.