Print Sources
The fair dealing policy permits the copying and distribution of short excerpts for the purposes of education.
What are short excerpts?
Canadian court decisions have established guidelines, which have informed the Centennial College Fair Dealing Policy.
A short excerpt includes any one of the following:
- Up to 10% of a copyright-protected work (including a literary work, musical score, sound recording, and audiovisual work)
- One chapter from a book
- A single article from a periodical
- An entire artistic work (including a painting, print, photograph, diagram, drawing, map, chart, and plan) from a copyright-protected work containing other artistic works
- An entire newspaper article or page
- An entire single poem or musical score from a copyright-protected work containing other poems or musical scores
- An entire entry from an encyclopedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary, or similar reference work
You should use the option most appropriate to the situation, within reason.
For example, if a book has 300 pages, and you want to copy a chapter with 100 pages, you would be copying 33% of the work — well beyond the 10% guideline and therefore beyond the limits of fair dealing.
On the other hand, if a book has 100 pages, and you want to copy a chapter with 15 pages, that is probably acceptable as that amount of copying is close to the 10% guideline.
You cannot reproduce multiple short excerpts from the same work.