Copyright

Understanding the basics of copyright law is a crucial step toward understanding a broader information landscape that depends on the creation, dissemination, and reuse of cultural material. Despite its complexity, copyright is ubiquitous, and people around the world gain and share copyright every day as they write emails, record videos, and create new works of art and scholarship. With a focus on areas most applicable to library and information science professionals, this entry briefly considers a range of rights-related topics, including general information as well as more specialized starting points for inquiry. By examining areas such as copyright exceptions, digital libraries, open licensing, and contracts, the entry also reflects how copyright has permeated scholarly communication and impacts decision making around knowledge sharing on a global scale. Throughout, discussion considers how copyright law has been shaped, contested, and interpreted over time. (Accepted manuscript)