Take a moment to mourn the material we can not access, that we can not freely share with our patrons, and that may never be accessible to us!! (How many of our patrons would have enjoyed having a free copy of Green Eggs and Ham?)
Current copyright law is too often a tragedy for libraries, and for the communities we serve. Look at this list, published every year by this organization, and consider some ways you might work within copyright laws to help your patrons. And then be a voice of advocacy in your community to loosen these too-tight federal laws!!
At CMLE Headquarters we are all about library advocacy!! So we are excited to pass on to you the chance to do some fun, and valuable, advocacy work for your library!
CMLE Guest Blogger: Carli Spina If you have any questions, let me know in the comments or contact me on Twitter where I’m @CarliSpina.
Creative Commons Part 1: What does “Creative Commons” mean?
Copyright is an important but often intimidating topic. As library staff, we may know that copyright protections exist, but knowing their exact parameters or how to get permission to use a copyrighted work can be complex and time consuming.
Recognizing this problem, a group of experts developed the concept of the Creative Commons (often abbreviated CC) and the associated licenses to make sharing, reusing, and remixing works easier for everyone. Using this approach, the creator of an item offers the item under a license (or legal agreement) that explicitly provides for the types of use that are permitted free of charge. Continue reading Creative Commons Part 1: What does “Creative Commons” mean?→
As library people, we spend a lot of time thinking about Information Literacy. It is our role to help members of our communities to learn about the information they need – not just to train them to look things up. Our jobs in this area are increasing as we see the numbers of people who can not identify fake news from real news. And of course, this is a much larger and broader topic – impacting things we do all the time.
Library people around the world are also working on this issue, and working to connect information with their communities served. If you would like an opportunity to go talk with some of your international colleagues, submit a proposal to the Fifth European Conference on Information Literacy. It will be held from 18-21 September 2017 in Saint-Malo France.
Although I have not been to this conference, I have talked with people who went in past years and really enjoyed it! I have worked as a reviewer of the proposals, and they sound interesting – useful in all kinds of libraries. Continue reading Information Literacy is International!→
Library people: We all know our patrons use Wikipedia. We use Wikipedia. It’s a pretty awesome tool! But it can be better!! We are passing on some information about strategies you can use to help Wikipedia to be better and more accurate.
Try it for yourself! Set up a Wikipedia event in your library! Use this as a starting point to make our of our frequently-used resources to be stronger!
