The University of Kansas Libraries

Scholarly Communications-- Information for Instructors

For Instructors

• Copyright & Fair Use Analysis-- Basics for Classroom
• Advising on Theses and Dissertations
• Teaching ethical uses of scholarly information
• Finding Open Access or Creative Commons materials

Copyright & Fair Use Analysis-- Basics for Classroom:

• Determine what copy rights are needed to post specific classroom materials:
  • In blackboard or KU E-Reserves.
  • Fair Use checklist from Columbia University libraries.
  • Fair Use Primer at Stanford University.
  • Know What You Can Do chart, to help determine what you can and cannot share with your classes from the Association of Research Libraries.
  • Is it protected by copyright?  Use this innovative online Digital Copyright Slider rule to help determine whether a work is protected, http://www.librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/.
• KU policies and guidelines on copyright.
• Add Creative Commons License to your own materials/creations for your classes (learning objects).
• When you need permissions from copyright holders and how to contact such holders, from Columbia University. Also see this site at Purdue's Copyright Management Center, which is older but very informative.
• Become an activist pushing for greater access to the products of scholarship or expansion of fair use for digital objects.

Advising on Theses and Dissertations:

• Advise KU graduate students on ETD access/embargo options –and copyright!

Teaching ethical uses of scholarly information:

• Include 'scholarly communications' concepts in my research methods course--what are the basics? Ask one of the KU librarians to come talk with your class. 
• Teach my students about the ethical uses of other people's copyrighted works.
  • "Avoiding plagiarism" section on KU's Writing Center site.
  • Digital Difference: Responsible Conduct of Research in a Networked World by Richard Fyffe and Scott Walter-- see chapter 1 starting on page 9: "Teaching for Responsibility: Plagiarism and Instruction in the Ethics of Information Use". This is an "open access" publication posted on KU ScholarWorks.
  • Information Services "Attribution/Plagiarism page provides links to useful information on this topic.

Finding Open Access or Creative Commons materials:

• A very brief introduction to Open Access (OA) by Peter Suber.
• CcSearch will help you to find Creative Commons licensed materials in repositories and elsewhere on the web-- that allow for free sharing in classrooms;
  • Find Open Access journals (and the content published in them);
  • OAister, created at the University of Michigan searches for other scholarly materials posted/published in open access repositories-- search.
  • MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) – an OA repository of peer-reviewed, higher education online learning materials.
  • Open Courseware Consortium – central site for finding colleges, universities, and other organizations that are adopting Open Courseware environments and offering their educational materials for anyone to use.  One of the first, and most widely known, of these is MIT’s Open Courseware archive.
  • ACLS Humanities E-Book – over 1,700 full-text, Open Access scholarly texts available for use.  A collaborative project of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), twelve other learned societies, 95 publishers, and the University of Michigan Libraries’ Scholarly Publishing Office.
  • Wikibooks – a Wikimedia Foundation project for Open Access, communally created textbooks for educational use.
  • Remember "open access" doesn't mean the material is in the "public domain" or without author-rights associated with them. Look for permissions to use in the classroom or Creative Commons licenses posted (see bottom of this webpage for an example).
• Textbook issues for your students:
  • GAO-05-806 – The U.S. Government Accountability Office report on College Textbook prices.
  • Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable – A May 2007 report of the U.S. Department of Education’s Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.
  • Make Textbooks Affordable – a collective campaign of several state Public Interest Groups (PIRG’s) advocating for changes in the textbook market.
    • Review and consider signing the Open Textbooks Faculty Statement of Intent
    • Read their report ‘Textbooks For the 21st Century: A Guide To Free And Low Cost Textbooks’
  • Flat World Knowledge – a project to provide Open Access Textbooks.  Scheduled to go live in January, 2009.
  • Textbook Revolution – another student advocacy group interested in textbook pricing issues and changing the system.
• College bookstores and Scholarly Communications Issues:
  • Stepping through the Open Door – report of a forum held among members of the National Association of College Stores, Association of College and Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE, about emerging and future roles and relationships between bookstores, libraries, and information technology organizations in Higher Education.
  • Textbook Insights – a report on the college bookstore marketplace commissioned by the Nebraska Book Company, and researched by Harris Interactive
  • NACS Copyright Page – National Association of College Stores information and advice to campus communities

Brought to you by the Scholarly Communications Working Group of the University of Kansas Libraries. Please contact Ada Emmett, aemmett@ku.edu, for questions or comments, additions or corrections to the above information.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.