EIFL is participating in Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, an annual celebration designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate success stories, and explain these doctrines. Over 40 countries around the world have fair use or fair dealing in their copyright laws.

Fifteen years ago, the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) launched a worldwide campaign for open access to all new peer ­reviewed research. There has been a tremendous progress, but we still have work to do to achieve the BOAI vision of a world in which published research in all academic fields is freely available on the internet. To celebrate the BOAI’s 15th anniversary, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager Iryna Kuchma reflects on progress in open access, and challenges facing the open access movement.

After attending the Internet Governance Forum 2016 in Mexico (6 - 9 December 2016), EIFL Public Library Innovation Programme (EIFL-PLIP) Advisor for Initiatives for Africa, Janet Sawaya, reflects on shifts in the global debate about internet inclusion, and observes a groundswell of interest in public libraries as essential internet access points.

EIFL joined a 13-strong team representing the world’s libraries, archives and museums advocating for an international treaty for fair access to knowledge at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR/33), which met in Geneva from 14-18 November 2016.

EIFL was represented at SCCR/33 by Copyright and Libraries Programme Manager, Teresa Hackett, and Pratyush Nath Upreti of Upreti & Associates in Nepal.

EIFL joins the World Blind Union and our global partners in celebrating the entry into force of the Marrakesh Treaty for persons with print disabilities. In this blog, EIFL Copyright and Libraries Programme Manager Teresa Hackett discusses what the ‘miracle of Marrakesh’ means for print disabled people. Teresa is on the World Blind Union (WBU) Marrakesh Strategic Advisory Group.

On 30th September 2016, the Marrakesh Treaty for persons with print disabilities enters into force.

Congratulations to our partner library consortia in Estonia and Poland, which both celebrate their 20th anniversaries this year!

‘Revisiting OA journal policies and practices in Serbia’ is an EIFL-funded open access (OA) project. It is being implemented by the Serbian Library Consortium for Coordinated Acquisition (KoBSON - EIFL’s partner consortium in Serbia) and the National Library of Serbia.

EIFL Open Access Programme Manager Iryna Kuchma reflects on the state of open access in Kenya, and points to new research that finds more work is needed to encourage use of OA institutional repositories.

In this blog, Teresa Hackett, EIFL Copyright and Libraries Programme Manager, reveals the data behind the demise of the British Library’s international non-commercial document supply service, reinforcing the argument that such services should be regulated by copyright law, not by licence.

Document delivery is a vital service in meeting the particular information needs of individual researchers, students and scholars.