Pentti Vattulainen
National Repository Library
Finland

Pentti Vattulainen holds master’s degree from the University of Helsinki. He has held various positions in Helsinki and Vantaa City libraries. He is the director of the National Repository Library, which was founded 1989 as a shared national storage facility and interlibrary lending centre. He has written articles on interlibrary lending and resource sharing as well as on collection policy and co-operation. He holds various memberships in national and international library associations. He is the chair of IFLA Acquisition and Collection Development Section.

Abstract

This paper describes the development of legality basis of document delivery in Finland.

The original copyright act in Finland is from 1961. This act was prepared in Nordic co-operation. There have been many changes since 1970-ies mainly due to technological development and there have emerged differences between Nordic countries. Latest amendment of Finnish copyright legislation was in 2005 to meet the demands of the digital environment and the internet. This reform implemented the Copyright Directive adopted by the EU in 2001.

The purpose of the paper is to study the effects of the reform to libraries’ possibilities to develop digital document delivery services. Some decades ago the legislator reacted to photocopying by trying to balance copyright and use with copyright limitations like allowing copying for personal use, special library privileges with reprographic reproduction, archival copying etc. In some cases copying was allowed with collective licensing. In digital environment these do not cover new needs, e.g. delivery to end-users. Copyright owners’ organisations offer direct licenses for document suppliers. However, there still is discussion about the legality basis of user-initiated document delivery.