For those who really like wrapping their minds around issues of fair use from multiple vantage points, this is a must read:

Anthony Davis Jr. “Fair Use: Articulating the Liberal Approach.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 12.2 (2012): 121-137. 20 Jun. 2012.

And if that doesn’t grab you, you might enjoy getting re-fired up about the fact that you write scholarly articles for FREE while someone else profits from it. Also included, a mini-history about the origin of the notorious “ten percent rule” used or disregarded by reserve librarians.

The Center for Intellectual Property will host a Community Conversation on July 19 from 1-2pm EST. If you are interested in attending this free, virtual event which is for CIP members, please contact Kathleen Collins by June 27. While it appears to be geared toward the U of Maryland audience, there will undoubtedly by some excellent ideas for you to incorporate into your teaching at CUNY. Here’s the description from the Center’s site:

Join the Community Conversation with Mark de Jong, Document Management Librarian and Institutional Liaison, UMUC Academic Center at Largo. The discussion topics include Best Practices in Copyright Literacy, including Staff Training and Development issues.

The UMUC Library supports the educational mission of UMUC by educating students, faculty, and staff in the use of library and information resources and services, emphasizing the critical importance of information literacy knowledge and skills for success in today’s information-rich world, Partnering with The Undergraduate School, The Graduate School, and UMUC faculty worldwide to promote and embed information literacy within the curriculum, and Developing and managing extensive online library resources and user-centered services for UMUC students, faculty, and staff worldwide.

CUNY has become an institutional member of the Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland. The organization has excellent conferences, workshops, training etc. led by top names in the field. CUNY community members now have access to discounts and special access to many of these resources.

For more info, see the institutional membership page, and check out CIP’s latest bulletin.

Of  particular interest this summer: “Streaming Media Case Series: A Discussion of the AIME v. UCLA Case in Three Acts.” This program will take place August 10, 17, and 24. More information will follow closer to the date of the event.

If you are interested in taking advantage of institutional member benefits, please contact Kathleen Collins.

Happy summer!

Brandon Butler (see preceding post) will be talking about the details and implications of the recently decided GA State e-reserves case (see earlier post) for a full hour on Thursday, May 24 from 2-3pm. Register up! Butler has also provided an issue brief (really brief compared to the 300+ page judge’s decision) on the case.

Brandon Butler, Director of Public Policy Initiatives at the Association of Research Libraries, will be part of a  Center for Intellectual Property Community Conversation on May 22 at 1pm. Registration is free. We can assure you that Brandon’s presentation of copyright and fair use matters is always clear, calm and immediately useful. Sign up! (update 5/25: now archived here, requires Java)

Librarians et al have been waiting to see what would happen with the copyright case at Georgia State University for about 2 years now. Yesterday, Judge Orinda Evans satisfied our curiosity on most counts. You can read one hot-off-the-press account from frontline observer, Duke’s Kevin Smith, here. (For a useful timeline of the case, see this compilation from Educause.) As Smith implies in his summary, the specific decisions will create lots of  buzz in coming days and weeks.

The Center for Social Media’s latest Fair Use Question of the Month will perk up librarians and archivists but certainly other entities that find themselves wanting to share historical info and objects online as well.  The explanation includes a nice plug for transformativeness, a central concept in fair use.

Another group adds a helpful document to the best practices collection. This one wrestles with something that many classroom faculty and librarians frequently have questions about. Take a look at the freshly-posted American Library Association Video Roundtable‘s “Fair Use and Video: Community Practices in the Fair Use of Video in Libraries.”

The  recent event at Columbia U., “Standards & Strategies for Fair Use Decisions Inside Libraries & Universities” was excellent and well attended. Much talk about the new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries ensued. Here is a likewise excellent summary. Therein, ARL‘s Brandon Butler is quoted as saying, “The goal of this document, in some sense, is to make risk management rational, to take some of the fear out and put a real understanding of how fair use can reduce the risk involved in projects.”

We cannot emphasize enough what an important and useful document this Code is, and we encourage you to read it, use it, share it as much as possible. It is not just for use by librarians – it’s useful to every member of an academic community. In an ideal world, content users will not simply ask librarians, “Can I do this?” but will, instead, learn about the concept of fair use, thereby empowering themselves to be able to make rational decisions at those inevitable and frequent moments of uncertainty. And please don’t forget about our committee’s resource, too, where we invite you to share your questions and concerns.

Speaking of educating (see previous post), here’s one chance to help promote copyright education. The U.S. Copyright Office provides the opportunity via a very short survey. Be honest, and really try not to look up the answer to #1 on Wikipedia.