JISC Collections Licensing Workshop: Copyright in the digital age - 7th September 2007, Birmingham

Announcement from JISC collections about a licensing workshop focusing on copyright in the digital age.

"Early Bird registration discount still available for members until 15th August

Copyright is a complex issue that confuses many and infuriates others. What you can do and cannot do in relation to the educational use of copyrighted digital resources is not clear and is complicated by myth, rumour and the Internet. It is now as easy to infringe upon the copyright of digital materials as it is for the infringement to be detected.

Following on from the popular workshop that was hosted in London earlier this year, JISC Collections is repeating this event, which will take place at the Millennium Point Thinktank events suite in central Birmingham on Friday, 7th September 2007. The workshop will focus on digital copying and issues relating to sharing between collaborative institutions. This will be of interest to librarians and all practitioners and teaching staff who use online content in their teaching.

Attendees will be introduced to the online interactive tool which demonstrates how online resources from JISC Collections can enable practitioners and institutions to resolve the common misconceptions and issues relating to the use of copyrighted digital and online resources in research, teaching and learning."

You can find more details and register online here

New survey on open content licences

The Eduserv Foundation is funding a study into the use of Creative Archive, Creative Commons and similar open content licences by cultural heritage organisations in the United Kingdom. The study is being led by legal consultant Jordan Hatcher of opencontentlawyer.com. As part of the study a survey has been released. Click here to take the survey.

The survey is open to UK-based cultural heritage organisations such as museums, libraries, galleries, archives, film and video organisations, broadcasters, and other organisations that conduct cultural heritage activities.

The goal of the study is to provide information on the actual use of Creative Archive, Creative Commons, and similar licences. This information will be useful to decision makers and interested professionals in the cultural heritage sector, and for local and national government and the HE and FE sector. The study will be conducted from now through to the middle of September and a report will be made available in October.

If you are a member of a cultural heritage organisation, whether or not you currently use Creative Commons or Creative Archive licences, your participation in the survey would be really helpful to make this study a success.

As a bonus for completing the survey, respondents will get the chance to enter a drawer to win one of three iPod Shuffles that come pre-loaded with music! See the survey for full details.

It would also be very helpful if you would publicise the survey by blogging about it or forwarding this post to people who you think might be interested.

You can learn more about the project and read the original research proposal at the project’s homepage.

If you would prefer to take part via post or telephone, or are interested in finding out more about the study, please contact Ed Barker and Jordan Hatcher at

cc-study@eduserv.org.uk
--or--
phone +44 (0) 125 474328

Creative Commons has launched a new division focussed on education. It's called ccLearn.

ccLearn is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Its mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

* With legal barriers, they advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. They will also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.
* With technical barriers, they promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.
* With social barriers, they encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

ccLearn will be in transition over the remainder of the summer, reaching full operation this in autumn. It is an international project, and will be working with open educational sites and resources from around the world.

Open Data Licensing: is your data safe?

Just a quickie. Those of you interested in the issues raised by data licensing might want to take a look at Chris Rusbridge’s interesting discussion of the area on the Digital Curation Blog.

Electronic copyright, IPR and access issues in the emerging electronic landscape

This sounds relevant...

Electronic copyright, IPR and access issues in the emerging electronic
landscape

ALISS One Day Summer Conference British Library Conference Centre
13th August 9.30-4.30

From the announcement:

“On 13th August ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information
Professionals in the Social Sciences) will be holding a one day conference
on the topical issue of electronic copyright IPR and access issues. It will
include presentations from ongoing projects and practical tips from
practitioners. The speakers will include:

• Copyright and data licensing;, does electronic differ from print?' Richard Ebdon, Copyright Officer, The British Library.
• The practicalities of copyright in the online age. Helen Bartlett, Copyright Manager, HERON.
• Rights and responsibilities: managing electronic images Grant Young Technical Research Officer, TASI - Technical Advisory Service for Images.
• IPR and multimedia in institutional repositories: lessons from the MIDESS Lesley Pitman, Librarian and Director of Information Services, UCL SSEES Library.
• Librarians against plagiarism: how Imperial College London is using PRS and active learning to combat the cut and paste generation. Ruth Harrison and Julia Garthwaite.
• Irish Studies Online - JSTOR and the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis, QUB. Norma Menabney, Queen University, Belfast.

Cost: £75 ALISS Members, Non-Members £95. This will include a buffet lunch
and tea/coffee.


Registration: Places are limited. To register contact: Heather Dawson,
ALISS Secretary, LSE Library, 10 Portugal Street, London, WC2A 2HD.
h.dawson@lse.ac.uk"

All Online Data Lost in Internet Crash!!

Checkout this breaking news.......

Building the Infrastructure for Data Access and Reuse in Collaborative Research: A Legal Analysis

Another one from the domain of open knowledge but this time from the other side of the globe….

Researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have released a report entitled 'Building the Infrastructure for Data Access and Reuse in Collaborative Research: A Legal Analysis'. This has been produced as a result of two different QUT projects: Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law and Legal Framework for e-Research.

The announcement explains that the report:

"examines the legal framework within which research data is generated, managed, disseminated and used. It provides an overview of the operation of copyright law, contract and confidentiality laws, as well as a range of legislation - privacy, public records and freedom of information legislation – that is of relevance to research data. The Report considers how these legal rules apply to define rights in research data and regulate the generation, management and sharing of data. The Report also describes and explains current practices and attitudes towards data sharing. A wide array of databases is analysed to ascertain the arrangements currently in place to manage and provide access to research data. Finally, the Report encourages researchers and research organisations to adopt proper management and legal frameworks for research data outputs. It provides practical guidance on the development and implementation of legal frameworks for data management with the objective of ensuring that research data can be accessed and used by other researchers."

I must admit that I have only scanned this so cannot give an accurate review but at 274 pages we can probably safely assume that it is pretty comprehensive!