Board Director Q&A: Nicole Dixon
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Nicole brings multiple perspectives to the Access Copyright Board. She is an award-winning author who recently completed a three-month stay at the Berton House writers’ retreat. She has also worked as an academic systems librarian and has fifteen years of teaching experience, in many subjects, from kindergarten to post-secondary, in traditional and online classrooms. Nicole explains how being a writer and teacher/librarian inform her work on the Board and led her to a change of opinion about “fair dealing.”
What interested you most about the prospect of joining the Access Copyright Board?
Other than being asked, I joined AC to meet people. I live on Cape Breton Island, which is pretty far away from all the cultural centres in Canada, so even though I love it here, I can feel a bit isolated and starved for culture and contact with the outside world. I don’t get many opportunities to meet people who work in the culture sector in Canada, especially people outside of the Maritimes, so being on the Board has and is giving me the opportunity to meet people with a wide range of backgrounds from all over Canada.
How would you describe your approach to board work?
As a writer, I thoroughly believe that creators should be compensated for the work they make. Writing is extremely difficult, takes a lot of time and doesn’t pay very well. Even the few dollars a writer can earn from being included in a coursepack can help that writer pay the rent.
Yet as a librarian, I’m interested in ensuring access to information. But I think librarians, especially academic librarians, have taken the idea that “information wants to be free” a bit too far. It’s easy to say information should be free when one is earning a salary at a permanent job.
Because of my position in the middle, I know firsthand that the relationship between creators and the education sector has become extremely unbalanced. I hope my work helps to rebuild the balance we’ve lost.
What, if anything, has surprised you since you’ve joined the board?
A number of librarians, professors and instructors now cry “fair dealing!” when it comes to compensating creators. Many universities have dropped their licensing agreements with Access Copyright in favour of their own, in-house copyright “rules”—which include the idea that 10%/one chapter of a book is OK to copy and distribute. Thanks to a few outspoken bloggers and a strong campaign from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), most who work in academe believe that the 10% clause is the law. I know this well because I believed it, too, before I joined the Board.
What do you hope the organization can accomplish during your term?
AC needs to educate the educators, to help them understand what the copyright law really entails. It’s daunting, as I said, because most academics have turned their backs on AC. If AC can find a way to reopen dialogue, and have conversations with educators, it could go a long way to helping people understand the need for AC.
I know that librarians are often on the lookout for new, good products for their clients (faculty and students). What could AC offer? How could AC offer better access to content while still ensuring creators of that content are compensated for their work?
Please share something you’re passionate about outside your day-to-day work.
This year I made the transition from hobby gardener to full-time backyard homesteader. I’ve been reading as many books as I can about permaculture and regenerating land through sustainable gardening and farming. Scientists, and, finally, our politicians are talking about mitigating climate change and preparing for a difficult future. And our first step to preparing for such a future is to ensure local food security. To paraphrase Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening, all other accomplishments—including cultural, technical, and democratic—are transient and superficial without sustainability. By building a resilient and regenerative food forest in my own backyard, I hope to teach and inspire others that growing food isn’t just yummy and fun (and, often, cheaper than buying groceries), but a necessary first step towards repairing and rebuilding our neighbourhoods and planet.
What was the last thing you read that you felt compelled to recommend to others?
Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? is one of the most feminist—and funny—books I’ve read in ages. It also provides wonderful, accurate insights into the creative process, art, and art making. Niki Jabbour’s The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener helped me be a better gardener this year. I think my vegetable yield almost doubled this year—it’s December, and I still have food growing in my garden, thanks to this book.
E-books or paperbacks? Paperbacks.