Professional Development

I was invited to participate, along with 9 other rare books and special collections librarians across the U.S., in a special event at the 15^th annual Oak Knoll Book Festival and Conference held in New Castle, Delaware. Organized by rare and antiquarian book dealer Bob Fleck of Oak Knoll Press, the festival brought together 10 rare books librarians with 10 fine press and typographic designers and publishers from across the U.S. and from England, Wales, and Paris for dialogue, dinner, and conversation.

In April, Bob Fleck invited me to participate in this first ever gathering. Others invited and attending were Special Collections Librarians at Columbia University (Jane Siegel remembered Jim Galbraith warmly!); University of Kentucky; University of Delaware; University of Iowa (and their Center for the Book); Duke University; Lafayette College; University of Washington; and University of Indiana.

The weekend began with the 20 of us sharing a bit about our libraries including our collections, our philosophies of collecting, our budgets, and our standing orders with fine presses. For the printers and artists books designers the dialogue was complementary in terms of their focus in work, their emphases in printing, their physical locations in terms of distribution, their price structures and their own philosophies for choosing content and format.

The conversation was lively and informative for the 10 hours we had together on the first day, beginning in a large setting, then in a smaller group break-out session, and then back to share all with each other. We continued over drinks and dinner into the night.

We learned about how each of our acquisitions budgets and buying power allow us to purchase fine press rare materials and the thought and deliberation that goes into the selection and buying. Format, content, style, literary representation, and cost are all critical elements in making the decision to buy or not to buy.

The presses, in turn, shared with us their reasons for the limit on their number of books due to time and cost constraints. Because the work is so labor intensive what with setting type; illustrating and illuminating appropriate to author’s content; binding and sewing; and advertising and selling, the press persons are often by necessity bivocational, utilizing a second job’s salary to help pay for their press expenses. Output is often limited to 100 copies or less, and all are signed by the artists and writers and publishers. Expenses are high and, as a result, prices usually range from $100 - $2500 per book. The final product, though, is one worthy of artists’ shows for the beauty, delicacy, sensitivity to text, design, and flow of writing are exquisite and one of a kind.

Six of the presses from whom I purchase books and broadsides were represented at the table: Bird and Bull Press (with whom I have a long standing standing order); Gregynog Press in rural mid-Wales; Old Stile Press in southern Wales; Incline Press in London; and University of Kentucky Press.

One of the presses with whom I established a new standing order to purchase the press’s entire offerings is Press on Scroll Road. Bob Baris, owner, is printer, typesetter, publisher, distributor, and certified purebred organic sheep farmer from central Ohio. Bob is a close personal friend of poet and writer Wendell Berry and he publishes much of the original writings of Berry as well as poet Peter Fallon, among others. Bob and I shared stories of farm work, border collies, weaving (his wife weaves wool from 4 Dorset sheep), and beautiful autumn days with fall harvest and frosty mornings. He and I shared (over merlot and the best crabcakes I’ve ever had in my life!!) a common love of and appreciation for books, poetry, printing, hard work and farming of old.

Also at our table was David Vickers of Gregynog Press in Wales. His works are among the most beautifully crafted and are representative of some of the best writers of England and Ireland from the 16^th centuries to the present. He, too, is from a farming life in Wales and we talked at length of presses and the countryside surrounding his working shop.

The following day was the crème de la crème of rare books buying!I purchased works from many fine presses including Pre Nian, Gregynog, Shanty Bay, Solmentes, and Old Stile publishing the writings of Vita Sackville-West, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Britten, Aeschylus, Wendell Berry, John Keats, among others. I also included one small chapbook from the VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond) graphic design press students as well as a small item from Wells College Press and their students. I spoke with more than 20 press persons and purchased judiciously, according to our collection needs and areas of study and research.

The 15^th anniversary of the Oak Knoll Festival honored Henry Morris, founder of Bird and Bull Press. A prior interest in making handmade paper led Henry Morris to establish Bird & Bull Press in 1958, and it is now one of America’s oldest private presses. Strong interest in the art and history of handmade paper has resulted in a variety of books on Western, Japanese, and Chinese papermaking, marbled and decorated papers and other books on related subjects. Henry regaled us on two mornings of the festival with tales and woes of his days of printing and publishing including printing his first work, an 18^th century cookbook (where he took out lines of recipes to fit his sheets of paper!) published on sheets of paper he’d handmade himself, a labor intensive work in and of itself. He spoke of trying to sell this small book to New York bookstores at $3.00 apiece and was elated when he could. Today, if a copy of this first printing can be found, it is worth $300.00! A real lesson in the values of patience and persistence and entrepreneurship!

The festival was a terrific combination of meeting, socializing, learning and buying! I hope to be at the next anniversary gathering doing more of the same!

Have you heard of open access? Do you know what it is? If you’re a clinician, do you think it has something to do with free clinic hours? Do you already know that it is a movement to change the often restrictive nature of scholarly publishing? Even if you do know about open access, there’s likely more you could know - and do!

In honor of the first Open Access Day, sponsored by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition, Students for Free Culture and the Public Library of Science (an open access publisher), the WFU Libraries want to bring your attention to the open access movement, how open access is affecting the Wake Forest community, and what resources you have available to support personal open access pursuits.

Open access is a movement to remove the price and permission barriers for accessing and reusing scholarly research publications. The open access movement does not work against the fundamentals of copyright or peer review. Rather it aims to work with the necessary features of established scholarly publishing, albeit with major changes to subscriptions and accessibility.

There are two main routes to open access - gold and green. Gold open access is open access publishing: rather than have the subscribers pay to access the content, limiting distribution to only those institutions and individuals who are able to afford access, open access publishing shifts the cost of distribution to the content providers, the authors. Many authors have funds available from either institutions or awards to cover costs, with the end result being wider distribution and access to their scholarly output, as access to these publications are not limited to the pool of subscribers. Green open access is open access archiving: authors place copies of their articles in an institutional or subject-based digital archive or repository where they are freely accessible, usually after an embargo period specified by the publishers. Many publishers already give authors permission to archive the pre-print (pre-peer review version) or post-print (post-peer review version incorporating changes from peer review but not yet formatted for final publication), and some even grant permission to archive the final published version.

Although green open access removes price barriers, it does not necessarily remove permission barriers. Gold open access publishing removes permission barriers by granting in advance the rights to reuse and redistribute articles for non-commercial uses, and occasionally even commercially. Sometimes even derivative works are allowed. There is great flexibility within the various open access options to meet authors’ needs and comfort-levels regarding distribution and reuse of their works. For more information on open access, see Peter Suber’s Open Access Overview.

Here at Wake Forest, the WFU Libraries are working to raise awareness of open access among faculty, students and staff. Both the Z. Smith Reynolds Library and the Coy C. Carpenter Medical Library have resource pages on scholarly communication issues (ZSR, Carpenter) and open access (ZSR, Carpenter). A group of librarians, with input from faculty and research administrators, are working to build an institutional repository for Wake Forest that will enable us to better collect, highlight and disseminate the world-class research conducted at our University. Faculty members from both campuses are already publishing in open access journals and hybrid access journals (traditional journals with article-by-article optional open access), and submitting to subject-based repositories, such as PubMed Central. Through compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy, many faculty researchers are realizing that they are able to retain many of their rights as copyright owners in their works when seeking publication, without forfeiting the opportunity to be published in premiere journals.

For more information on open access and what you can do, talk to your librarians at ZSR and Carpenter Libraries. And stay tuned for more news about the WFU Libraries’ growing support for open access pursuits at Wake Forest!

–By Molly Keener, WFUBMC Library

On Oct. 9, I drove down to East Carolina University in Greenville for the annual meeting of the Southeast Music Library Association. It was a very interesting and varied program this year:

Library “Infomercials”

Nathalie Hristov, Music Librarian at UT Knoxville, gave a presentation titled “The Music Library Informercial: a Practical Guide for Creating the Most Powerful Marketing Tool You Will Ever Use.” Nathalie had noticed that certain materials in the Music Library — audio-streaming databases, directories, vocational literature (job ads, etc.) — seemed to be under-utilized. She contacted Alan Wallace, UT’s Education Librarian, who had made videos for the main library, about producing an infomercial on the Music Library’s resources and services, with a special focus on the under-used resources, to be shown at the music school’s fall convocation, which all students were required to attend.

The infomercial fulfilled all expectations: surveys conducted before and after showed increased student awareness of the Music Library’s services in general; an increase in the number of students who knew about the under-used materials and who had used or planned to use them; and a large majority who reported that they found the infomercial to be both entertaining and helpful.

Nathalie’s and Alan’s advice on the nuts-and-bolts of producing an infomercial:

Script:

• Don’t overload your infomercial. Decide what you want to focus on (e.g. under-used resources), and cut your script to make it as concise as possible.
• Keep narration to a minimum, or you’ll lose viewers’ attention.
• Speak the students’ language (not librarianese).
• Play on students’ strengths, wants, and needs (papers due, rehearsals to prepare for, finding a job after graduation).

Scheduling:

• Create a timeline. Divide the project into sections, and set a deadline for each section’s completion.
• Stay on schedule to avoid losing currency of information.

Cast:

• Use local talent. (One option: drama students.)

Taping:

• Survey your venue for aesthetics. Ugly objects like trash receptacles, signs taped up on walls, etc., are “forgiven” by the eye in real life, but jump out on the video screen.
• Use cue cards, since your cast are likely not to be trained actors.
• Use uniform clothing (a school T-shirt is good) for your cast. Otherwise, if you’re filming the same people in separate sessions, subsequent editing can create a comical impression of sudden costume changes (say, for warm and cold weather).
• Go for interesting angles (from above, below, etc.). In cramped stacks spaces, the UT team shot through openings between shelves.

Editing:

• The UT team used iMovie, a Mac-based software. They also used Final Cut Pro, but warned that this product was expensive and involved a steep learning curve.
• Screencasting tools like Snagit and Camtasia can be used.
• The final step is exporting and burning to disk, which depending on the application can take anywhere from a couple of hours to fifteen.

Evaluation:

• Solicit viewer feedback, as the UT folks did with before-and-after surveys.
• Also important is cost/benefit analysis. Document everything: the UT team made daily records of time spent, tools used, etc.

Embedded Info-Lit

Sarah Manus, Music Librarian for Public Services at Vanderbilt, gave a presentation titled “Librarian in the Classroom: an Embedded Approach to Music Information Literacy for First-Year Students.” Vanderbilt’s music curriculum includes a “core” of four courses on music history and literature which all incoming music majors are required to take. Sarah took advantage of this opportunity to embed herself in all four courses, giving progressive instruction from the basics (the library’s catalog) in the introductory course to advanced research tools (composers’ thematic catalogs) in the fourth. Her original plan was to give two info-lit sessions per course, but faculty subsequently asked her to “front-load” her syllabus with more sessions in the first course.

Sarah’s participation included:

• Attending all class sessions.
• Participating in class discussion, when asked to by the instructor.
• Answering students’ questions about their research.
• Holding office hours twice a week.

Sarah warned that this degree of embedment required a huge time committment, especially after the music school added a second section to the core, and she consequently found herself attending class five days a week. Sarah said she also had difficulty remembering which material she had given when to each section!

(It’s also worth noting that Vanderbilt has three music librarians — one for public services, one for cataloging, and a director of the music library — which enabled Sarah to make the necessary time committment to an embedded project of this scale. As Sarah noted, where you have one person performing all three roles (like at Wake), or you have a large program with several hundred students enrolled, it would not be the most feasible option.)

There were some other unanticipated difficulties with the embedded approach. Sarah’s familiar presence in the classroom led some students to draw the wrong conclusion. The inevitable procrastinators expected her to do their research for them, and others prevailed on her to pull strings on their behalf, such as having library fines forgiven. The instructor had to give the class a stern lecture to the affect that “Sarah is not your slave, and will not do your work for you!” Still, Sarah found that the opportunity to get to know the students and their needs, and to be more closely involved in the overall educational process, was well worth it.

Improvements Sarah plans:

• Devote more time to the research process. Sarah found that many of the students were used to doing short critical essays, and had never done an extended research project before.
• Use active learning techniques, such as small-group work.

Ethnological fieldwork

Holling Smith-Borne, also from Vanderbilt, gave a presentation on “Recording the Traditional Music of Uganda.” This was an update on the development of the Global Music Archive project, a website hosted by Vanderbilt that offers audio streaming of traditional music, so far from Africa. Holling became acquainted with a prominent Ugandan musician who served as an adjudicator for Uganda’s annual national music festival. This man consequently knew all the best traditional musicians in the country, and had an extensive network of contacts with universities, govenment agencies, and other institutions interested in preserving Ugandan culture. Vanderbilt provided him with a salary, recording equipment, and training, and engaged him to travel the country supplying material for the Global Music Archive. Holling and his team hope to identify similar contacts in other African countries, to expand on this work.

They next plan to add to the Archive:

• Appalachian dulcimer music
• Indigenous Mexican music
• An existing Vanderbilt archive of tango music

http://www.globalmusicarchive.org/

Greenville being so near the coast, our guest speaker was retired ethnomusicologist Otto Henry, who shared wonderful reminiscences of his fieldwork on the Outer Banks, recording old-timers singing and playing folk music of the area. Many of his recordings were issued on the Folkways label.

Business meeting

We missed the company of a number of colleagues this year due to cutbacks in travel funding (Georgia’s state library system in fact announced the total elimination of travel funding just a day before the SEMLA meeting). We dovoted some time in our business meeting discussing how the general downturn in the economy was likely to make professional travel increasingly difficult for many for some time to come, and explored ways of compensating for this unfortunate trend, including screencasting future SEMLA meetings.

Also in the business meeting, a student member proposed creating a Facebookaccount for SEMLA, with the object of outreach to library-school students, and of increasing awareness of music librarianship as a career. The idea was well received, and an exploratory committee was set up.

All in all, a very enjoyable and informative meeting this year — I’ve come back with lots of ideas for our LIB250 course and other endeavors!

The Spectrum of the Future Conference held this week in Louisville Kentucky was sponsored by the Kentucky Library Association, the Kentucky School Media Association, the Southeastern Library Association as well as the ARL National Diversity in Libraries Conference. This combination resulted in a beautiful blend of cultures not seen at any other Southeastern Library conference. Of course this was also the first one that featured my middle name on display WANDA KAY; a very southern tradition. I had breakfast with Debbie Noland and several conversations with fellow ZSR staffer Rachel Khune, now Stinehelfer(?) who recently joined the UNC-G crew as HR librarian. The prevailing conference theme focused on strategies for achieving diversity while avoiding diversity related recruitment stumbling blocks and pitfalls. Sessions were either singing the praises for how well we did it or showcased the pathways to failure.

My opening session featured the University of North Carolina at Wilmington sharing how they forged the path to “Shaping Institutional Change: an Assessment of Diversity Programming at a Comprehensive University Library.” While I appreciated their efforts, I really didn’t quite get their approach. The institution began by incorporating diversity statements within their strategic plan. Perhaps it was the Library’s strategic initiative that seemed a little off key. They began by asking staff to voluntarily participate in a testing instrument entitled a Diversity Awareness Profile. Of the 44 member UNCW library staff only 32 agreed to take the test. To me having a fourth of your staff opt not to participate, showed a lack of commitment. That coupled with the fact that after implementing programs designed to increase awareness, another fourth of the staff choose not to take the post test. I’m not exactly sure how to read this either. The programs they offered as awareness initiatives are activities we incorporate as a part of our daily operations. There list of activities included pot lunch lunches, programs featuring minority keynoters, technology training sessions, National Library Workers Day lunch, and taking staff photos. UNCW has twice the student population we have here at Wake; 11,793 with only 44 full time staff of which 21 are librarians.

UNC-G librarians were eager to share their news concerning their inaugural resident minority librarian. Their presentation on the “Role of Library Education in Increasing Diversity” featured Dean Bazirjian revealing details surrounding their first diversity resident and LIS professor Dr. Chow discussing demographic numbers for the school. Each emphasized the need to increase minority enrollment within the LIS school at the same rate as the rest of the school which now boast a 25% minority population. They may have come close to falling into one of the mentioned pitfalls. Their presentation included a picture of their resident and spoke of how proud they were of him. Probably pretty close to tokenism. This was followed by displaying yet another picture of there only other African American Librarian in his new role as Diversity Coordinator. If the slide presentation featured pictures of all the staff and the campus etc. then showcasing their photos would in my opinion have been more acceptable. Diversity discussions seem so complicated at times. I guess it’s hard to know what’s right and wrong, a thin line to walk at times, however diversity related initiatives are a necessary pain and UNC-G‘s efforts are to be commended.

“Invited But Not Included” focused on yet another dilemma experienced by some minority librarians. Yes we have our one but don’t let him/her speak or think out loud. So the young energetic librarian is crushed when his/her ideas are laughed at, ignored and not welcomed at the table. Presenter Tracie Hall asked that we not mention the names of those librarians who shared their sad stories of events that occurred while working the Reference desk, while serving on committees and while functioning as the solo minority librarian. Patrons would actually go around minority librarians to a student assistant or simply ask to speak with the librarian on duty. Others shared the heart-break of not having their ideas listened to or being asked to serve on every search committee so the library would look inclusive. Some were asked to serve too much on every diversity related initiative on their campuses. Libraries are in some cases only concerned about the appearance of having some semblance of representation within their staff, not real inclusion at the table.

I could hardly wait to attend the session OCLC sponsored on “Fostering Inclusion: Best Practices and Lessons Learned at OCLC.” Personally I have never seen any evidence that OCLC valued inclusion or diversity. I can’t recall ever seeing persons of color featured within the brochures they’ve produced, featured as keynoters for any major presentation given at ALA or even working their exhibit booths. So I was eager to see where this inclusion was occurring. Nance-Spayde, OCLC Vice President for Corporate Human Resources began the session quoting a line from Dr. Martin Luther King; I look confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one, with no thought to their separateness. OCLC has a 15% minority population of workers. They have a President’s Inclusion Council tasked with identifying cases of discrimination, promoting innovation, improving awareness and cultural competence, serving as the eyes and ears of the President and recommending and implementing groups, programs and policies. I couldn’t resist it any longer, I had to ask what percentage of the 15% held positions in upper management and her answer was just as I expected zero! She was however quick to say OCLC recognizes this as a major problem and is working on it. Among OCLC best practices are an inclusion incentive. If you attend awareness programs you can earn a 10 to 15% bonus. If you refer a minority as an applicant that makes the interviewed pool, that’s good for $1,000 and if that person ends up getting hired that’s good for another $1,000. Can you believe she turned to the audience and asked if we had similar programs at our libraries. When you see me you can tell me how many hands went up from the audience.

“Early Recruiting: the University Library Diversity Fellowship for Undergraduate Students.” Indiana University, Purdue University uses a fellowship program to add color to their library student workforce and to familiarize them with a variety of librarianship career paths. A service oriented project is also included which generally results in creating a more welcoming environment within the library. I think we could adopt a similar program here for our students.

Though the program listed her as being from Mercer University, Macon Georgia the name sounded too familiar. Had she taken another job in yet another state. I was relieved to find it a mere typographical error, for Iyanna Sims rightful employer remains A& T State University. Iyanna teamed up with Shaundra Walker correctly affiliated with Mercer University to discuss “Perceptions of African American Undergraduates Toward Academic Librarianship as a Career Choice.” Surveys were distributed to students enrolled in two library instruction classes offered at A&T. The purpose of the survey was to investigate the students’ knowledge of the field as a potential career. Interestingly enough when asked to rank the top ten careers, librarianship came in last with doctor, lawyer, teacher taking the top three spots, Though librarianship came last, it barely surpassed social worker and business manager who A&T stats show are popular fields of study for African American students. Attendees encouraged the presenters to expand this study and if nothing else it will plant the seed.

This was overall a great conference. I was a little unprepared for I should have brought along copies of our Systems Librarian posting. I am learning as I go. And the idea of joint partnerships with Library schools, high schools and undergraduate students are all appealing to me. If this topic interest you also, let’s talk.

Wanda

Today a whole group of zsr staff watched a Blended Librarianship conference. There was an interesting discussion about how libraries are changing. There was general agreement that the most interesting part of the discusion was a review of perspectives on the future of libraries.

The session did include some citations to some recent reports:

• No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century
• Ithaka Report

There was a lively discussion in the journal reading group this morning related to the article Why Professor Johny Can’t Read. The conversation varied far and wide and included an admission by Erik that he had not read the article prior to the meeting, and more insightful discussion on the place of vertical/horizaontal information consumption techniques.

The article discussed the reading/research/information consumption habits of “Net Gen” students and there was an interesting debate around whether or not these new learning habits were something new or just a new twist on the long held approaches to Constructivist learning and information seeking.

Kaeley stepped up to pick an article for the next reading group (On November 6) so come on out & talk in the ITC screening room - Perhaps we can all discuss our information seeking habits on election day!

This afternoon, a group of Carptenter, PCL, and ZSR library staff gathered together to watch the first OLE Project webcast. The webcast discussed their scope, goals, and accomplishments to date. The project is still in its early stages but intends to design a new ILS based on SOA principles. Interestingly, they are already looking towards the “build” phase which will possibly start in July 2009.

During the Q&A session, there was an interesting statement that there was hope that the build phase would take about 2 years. There were some related comments about being able to use the development efforts of other projects as well.

There are some detailed notes in the library wiki.

In late July, early August I attended a three week e-learning course hosted by ACRL titled “Copyright and The Library, Part 1: The Basics Including Fair Use.” In addition to discussion board postings and online readings, class members participated in weekly homework and library assessment assignments, audio lectures, and question and answer AIM sessions. I have summarized the basics of the copyright law and sections that pertain to libraries below.

Summary

The copyright law and code is found under Title 17 of the United States Code and is broken into several sections that affect libraries and archives.

• Section 101: Definitions of terms commonly used throughout copyright law and sections
• Section 106: Exclusive Rights in Copyrighted Works
• Section 107: Limitations of Exclusive Rights, Fair Use
• Section 108: Limitations of Exclusive Rights, Reproductions by Libraries and Archives
• Section 109: Limitations of Exclusive Rights, Effect of Transfer of Particular Copy or Phonorecord
• Section 504(a)(b)(c): Remedies for Infringement and Damages

Categories of Works of Authorship include:

• Literary works (including computer programs)
• Musical works (non-dramatic)
• Dramatic works (including music)
• Pantomimes/Choreographic works
• Pictorial/graphic/sculptural
• Motion pictures and other AV materials
• Sound recordings
• Architectural works
• Compilations/collective and derivative works
• Three requirements for copyright to attach to a work:
• Must be original
• Work of Authorship
• Fixed in a tangible medium

Exclusive Rights:

The owner of a copyright has the exclusive rights to do and authorize the following:

• Reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords
• Distribute copies or phonorecords to the public by sale or transfer of ownership (by rental, lease, or lending)
• Prepare derivative works based on the original copyrighted work
• Perform the copyrighted work (in the case of literary, musical, pantomime, choreographic, motion picture, or any audio-visual work)
• Display the copyrighted work (in the case of literary, musical, pantomime, choreographic, motion picture, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, or any audio-visual work)
• Perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission (in the case of sound recordings)

Fair Use and the Four Factors:

A copyrighted work may be used without the permission of the copyright holder if its use meets the four factors of Fair Use.The Four Factors, that are mandatory, include:

1. The purpose of and character of the use of the copyrighted work is non-commercial vs. commercial, substitute/superseding vs. transformative.
   1. Is the use of the copyrighted work for commercial gain, to substitute paying for an original
2. The nature of the copyrighted work with regards to published/unpublished, thick/thin
   1. Unpublished works are still open to Fair Use but tend to be a little more protected by the Government through Orphan Works rights
   2. Thick/thin argument-if the work is a newspaper that is being used, Fair Use can be applied since the majority of a newspaper issues is factual information with a minor amount of “original work”
3. The amount and substantiality of the work taken
   1. Quantitative-how much of the copyrighted work is being used
   2. Qualitative-what is being used of the copyrighted work
   3. Will the amount of the work taken impact the quality of the work/will the amount taken impact the market?
4. The effect of the use of the work on potential markets or the value of the work is evaluated by primary, secondary, derivative and educational markets.
   1. While the use of a copyrighted work may not directly impact the primary market or value, misuse under Fair Use can affect secondary or derivative markets and values.
   2. Infringement of work may not directly affect a journal subscription but its use would affect the secondary market of individual article downloads offered by the journal publisher

Types of Copyright Infringement:

Direct Infringement (Primary Liability)

• Direct infringement must be established before secondary infringement can be determined
• “ignorance of the law” is not an excuse in defining direct infringement, but can be used when determining/setting penalties
• EXAMPLE: the student who knowingly photocopied a copyrighted material.

Contributory Infringement (Secondary Liability)

• definition based on CONDUCT
• Definition includes intermediary causes or substantially contributed to the direct infringement OR knows of the infringing nature of the copyrighted material
• Courts typically examine the guidelines of Fair Use before determining contributory infringement occurred.
• EXAMPLE: in academic settings, contributory infringers are students pirating movies, illegally downloading audio files, plagiarized text.

Vicarious Infringement (Secondary Liability)

• Definition based on RELATIONSHIP
• An intermediary has ability to control the conduct of the direct infringer AND receives direct financial gain from the activity of infringement.
• EXAMPLE: a faculty member has a student copy book chapters/journal articles for a workbook, then sells that workbook to his/her enrolled students.

Trials:

There are two types of trials for cases of copyright infringement and the type is established by copyright owner.Copyright cases can either be handled as a bench trial by a judge OR a jury trial of peers.

Damages:

Once the Court has determined and identified all actors of infringement and their liability roles, the next step is setting damages.Although you may be identified as a direct, contributory, or vicarious infringer, you can impact the amount or cost of damaged enforced.

Damages

• Actual financial damages suffered by the copyright holder (any profit made on part of the infringer)
• Ranges from $750.00 to $30,000.00 per infringing work, NOT per copy

Injunctive Relief

• Acts a probationary period before monetary damages are enforced; includes cease and desist orders, seizure and destruction of infringing material, and disabling access.
• If above actions are not taken or enforced, then monetary penalties will be set and imposed.

Fees

• Instead of damages or injunctive relief, courts may only impose court costs and attorney fees
• Fees are set at the discretion of the court, not by a jury or prosecutor
• Typically these fees are NOT cheap

Penalty Enhancement

• Court can enhance the penalties imposed for “willful violations” and “reckless disregard for the law” meaning ignoring cease and desist orders, infringement notices…etc.
• Enhancement fees enforced can be as high as $150,000.00

Miscellaneous-ness:

U.S.C. section 507: The statute of limitations for any copyright infringement is 3 years for civil actions and 5 years for criminal actions.Criminal actions are defined as “actual intent” of infringement such as bootlegging movies for profit.

U.S.C. section 408: Before a copyright lawsuit can be filed a work must be registered.However, registration is no longer required under law; it is permissive, not a prerequisite.

U.S.C. section 410(c): A work can be registered within 5 years of publication and the validity of copyright is considered “prima facie” evidence when used in copyright cases.

U.S.C. section 411 and 412: Registration.Although registration of a published work is no longer required, it is a prerequisite to infringement litigation.For unpublished works, registration must occur before infringement AND within 3 months of publication in order to gain statutory damages and/or attorney’s fees.

For additional readings:

Crews, Kenneth and Georgia Harper. “The Immunity Dilemma: Are State Colleges and Universities Still Liable for Copyright Infringements?” Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Vol. 50(1999): 1250-1352.

Burningham, Bradd. “Copyright Premissions: A Pilot Project to Determine Costs, Procedures, and Staffing Requirements.” Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply. Vol. 11(2000): 95-111.

Circular 21

On August 21st, I attended Elon University’s 5th Annual Innovation in Instruction Conference. Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, was the keynote speaker. I won’t rehash the details already reported upon by Lauren, but the take-home lesson for me is that we should teach less of an “Information Paradigm” but more of a “Participation Paradigm,” where students can navigate the world and critique and analyze information. In addition, teaching is less about control, and more about enabling your students to become active participants rather than passive observers.

Next, I attended Lauren’s presentation, “Students as Contributors: Teaching Skills While Teaching Content.” There was lively discussion about the influence of social media in business, politics, and education. For more information, check out her presentation here.

I also attended “Evaluating Critical Thinking” by Ed Neal, Director of Faculty Development at the UNC Center for Faculty Excellence. This session provided many practical tips on how to effectively evaluate your students’ critical thinking skills. He provided many examples of the types of exam questions which assess different levels of learning in Bloom’s Taxonomy. He also provided examples of grading rubrics, which are effective tools for encouraging higher level performance among your students.

Last, I attended “Teaching the Future” by Jeffrey Coker, Assistant Professor of Biology at Elon University, and Janna Anderson, Associate Professor in Communications at Elon University, which was already reported upon by Lauren. I was especially interested in the method in which Dr. Coker taught his Introductory Biology class. Dr. Coker has an interesting approach to teaching biology for non-science majors, where he focuses on “Ecological Change,” Cellular Change, and ” Genetic Change.” In his class, students design, implement, and analyze and present their own experiments. In addition, students design plausible biological systems for the future and plan their implementation. Some examples of student projects are “Eradicating human influenza” and “Human resistance to antibiotics.”

I am so glad that I attended this conference, because I learned many lessons about effective teaching that I plan to directly apply to my LIB220 course this fall and in future classes, as well.

Yesterday I attended Elon University’s 5th Innovation in Instruction Conference. I’ve attended almost all of them, and each year they get better. This year’s keynote should make it clear how impressive the event has become. Michael Wesch, of The Machine in Us(ing) Us, Information R/evolution, and A Vision of Students Today fame, was the keynote speaker and was one of the most interesting and provokative speakers I’ve heard in some time. The drive alone was worth hearing this talk. My notes, in detail, are here.

I also was able to give a few talks. My first one was “Learning From the Context” and I think we had at least 70 people in the room. It was a really nice crowd and I got positive feedback from several people:

I gave another talk with Jolie Tingen on convergence literacies. We had a smaller crowd, but we had some really good discussions:

The final session I attended was on “Teaching the Futures” and was largely about integrating futurist thinking into courses. My notes are here.

Innovations in Instruction is a great, and free, opportunity for those who are interested in effective and innovative teaching. It’s a crazy time of year, but I’m glad that they have it when they do. Reaching professors and instructors as they’re just getting ready to gear up for the fall is prime time for people who are looking to do something a little bit different this year. And the content and enthusiasm of the presenters was just the inspiration I needed to get energized for this coming semester.