Per my last post, I’m fully immersed in the land of the digital libraries this summer and I will be pulling together a digital library (DL) of my own based on a research project I am wrapping up this summer: Networked Communities of Practice

We have a few publications coming out soon, a few under review, a couple recently revised/resubmitted, and a couple more in development. In addition to the traditional scholarly outlets (e.g. journal articles or conference proceedings), we’re also working on sharing more about the two-year investigation into the lived, digital/social experiences of higher education professionals (e.g. graduate students, staff, and faculty) in other ways. .

One project this summer from this study, is to broaden the impact of our work to disseminate the research findings, practical implications, data sets, and networked practices/communities through non-academic, digital avenues. We hope to offer ways to find and use the data archives (e.g. open data sets, communities, etc.) and provide professional development resources for others to connect to these learning networks.

During our search, discovery, and conversations with participants, we have discovered a number of professional learning networks, online communities of practice, and a wealth of training resources to share with postsecondary educators in a digital collection. Specific digital objects and born digital items can be organized and itemized for others to gain access and utilize. Materials within this digital library (DL) are only able to include public domain, fair use, and open educational resources (OER), that is, Creative Common licensed objects. I am in the midst of reaching out and educating a few communities for how they can digitize and effectively share (based on copyright permissions) how to best share their work or groups archives via this DL project.Here are a few proposed digital objects I hope to include in my collection:

• Artifacts from previous conferences (e.g. presentations, handouts, etc.)
• Archived webinars/webcasts (e.g. open, free options)
• Video recordings and/or streaming channels, e.g. Vimeo & YouTube
• Podcasts  https://higheredpodcasts.wordpress.com/about/
• Higher education blogs written for and by professionals
• Twitter chats with CC-BY… license e.g. https://acadvchat.wordpress.com/ & https://lthechat.com/
• Diagrams, drawings, and/or images

That being said. Just because you upload, post, and share about your networked learning, practice, or community — does NOT make it an eligible digital object for inclusion in this digital library project. I hope to support individuals, groups, organizations, and communities who might want to be included in this archived library resource — especially if they do not have any license on their work and may want to be part of this digital collection.

Basically, I have been singing in my head: “If you want me to share your work, community, or professional learning resource — you will have to put a Creative Commons license on it!” Point of information, based on the copyright Beyoncé in this video, I would not be able to include this in my digital library:

To review and offer more information about this process, I thought give a few definitions of what can be included in this digital library collection.

Copyright

The copyright details how to share material while still respecting the rights of the content creators. This itemizes the permission of use and designates rights for protected materials. Copyright law applies to all works, including print, media, and electronic formats. For example, books, magazines, online articles, songs, screenplays, choreography, art, software, work, software, podcasts, and photos are all protected under copyright law. Those items that are not covered under copyright include ideas, facts, some data, and government items. When in doubt, get permission or determine if it is required or not. Don’t believe the big copyright myths, especially when it comes to digital collections and objects. Here are a few helpful copyright guides/resources from UNT:

• UNT University Libraries Quick Reference Guide: https://guides.library.unt.edu/SCCopyright
• UNT CLEAR Copyright Guide: https://clear.unt.edu/teaching-resources/copyright-guide

Public Domain

The public domain refers to creative materials or works that are not protected by intellectual property laws, including copyright, trademark, or patent laws. These materials are owned by the public, not an individual author, artist, or creator.  Public domain materials and work may be used without obtaining any permission; however, no one is permitted to claim ownership for it. More information about the Public Domain, “Collective Works,” and when copyright expires can be found at the Copyright & Fair Use Website via Stanford Universityand Teaching Copyright via the EFF.

Fair Use

As defined by the US Copyright Office (2019), “Fair Use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.” When considering if objects or materials are under fair use, you should examine the four requirements:

1. The purpose is for nonprofit, noncommercial educational use (typical cases).
2. The nature of the copyrighted work is consistent with the proposed use.
3. The amount and substantial of the original work involved some small uses can be considered an infringement, that is, a small portion involves the core idea in the copyrighted work.
4. The effect of using the copyrighted work is not likely to deprive the copyright holder of sales or market interest.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons offers copyright licenses and tools to allow for content to be shared beyond the traditional “all rights reserved” setting and decide on the best form of attribution for their work. The goal is to refine how copyright works and allows content creators to choose if they want to retain copyright while letting others copy, distribute, and make use of part of their work. You can decide what the copyright is and how others may use your photo, music, or works. In a video, Grigas (2017) describes how Creative Commons licenses provide:

“everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.“

To enhance your learning, training, and/or presentation materials, you may want to find creative commons and public domain images, videos, music, or media. Certain websites, such as Flickr Creative Commons, even offer users content with specific attribution for use. There is even a Creative Commons Search to aggregate even more content to share, use and remix, including media, images, video, audio, music, photography, and web resources. Besides Flickr, there are a number of other helpful sites to locate Public Domain or Creative Commons images. Additionally, there are ways to attribute and provide CC by licenses via other online accounts including YouTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Vimeo, Archive.org, and your blog or website. Here are some resources from about copyright and Creative Commons to support your putting a #CC license on  your work:

• Copyright and Creative Commons (CC) from UNT Digital Library https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc503235/
• CLEAR: https://clear.unt.edu/teaching-resources/copyright-guide/creative-commons
• The National Forum Open Licensing Tool Kit (May 2019)
• UBC OER Accessibility Toolkit
• Creative Commons Integration from A to Z
• Creative Commons Toolkit for Business

Image c/o laurapasquini on Flickr CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

Creative Commons licenses