In March, the British Library conducted a survey on researchers’ attitudes and needs in the digital age. Of the respondents, 93 per cent stated that access to online research material should be the same as for books. Most of the 320 respondents agreed that, in the age of the Internet, anyone involved in non-commercial research should be allowed, via ‘fair dealing’ or exemptions, to copy parts of electronically published works, including online articles, news broadcasts, film or sound recordings. ‘Fair dealing’ is the ‘right’ to make a copy from an in-copyright work without permission from, or remuneration to, the rights holder for non-commercial research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting. For example, most individual copying by researchers at university for academic purposes is done under the fair-dealing provision in UK law. Two-thirds (68 per cent) of the survey respondents are opposed to having different fair-dealing laws for material in paper or electronic format.

Further details of the survey are available at the British Library website.