Interact at the Center » Copyright/Creative Commons

Upload and share your work on Scribd.com

ctl — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:21:05 +0000

One of the leaders in online publishing is Scribd. Scribd allows people to upload documents – which can be in the form of reports, brochures, books, spreadsheets, puzzles and games, etc. – to the Internet for sharing with millions of readers. The website also allows you to discuss work that belongs to other people. And, Scribd is free for users!

As per Scribd’s FAQs:

Scribd lets you publish and discover documents online. It is like a big online library where anyone can upload. We make use of a custom Flash document viewer that lets you display documents right in your Web browser.

Part of the idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers that only they can read. With Scribd we hope to unlock this information by putting it on the web.

Scribd would a useful website for students, especially, graduate students to get feedback on term papers, thesis or dissertation chapters, and for providing feedback to other users. For professors Scribd could prove helpful in publishing pre-publication documents for feedback or learning about what other college instructors are doing in their field or another field.

Over the past couple years Scribd has steadily grown in its users and readership. Please take a look for yourself and see what you can share or discuss.

Creative Commons session, November 21st

ctl — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:06:55 +0000

Copyright, author’s rights, and licensing of personal works continue to enter into discussions at all levels of university work. From faculty authorship to students’ creative works available on the Internet, each individual can now specify the conditions for the distribution and use of their works using the Creative Commons.

[From the Creative Commons website:]

What You Can Do Here

Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can’t do with your work. When you choose a license, we provide you with tools and tutorials that let you add license information to your own site, or to one of several free hosting services that have incorporated Creative Commons.

With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here. For those new to Creative Commons licensing, we’ve prepared a list of things to think about. If you want to offer your work with no conditions, choose the public domain.

On November 21st BGSU Libraries will be hosting its final session dedicated to discussing and learning about Creative Commons. The sessions are from 2:30-4:30pm in 113 Olscamp Hall and 1011 Cedar Point Center (Firelands campus). Registration isn’t needed for this event, you’re welcomed to just show up for the session. For more information, please send questions to: ctl@bgsu.edu or call 419.372.6898.

Google Books

ctl — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:13:26 +0000

Do you ever have a hard time finding books and sources to help you prepare for lectures and classes? Do you have a list of books that you would love to read, but just don’t have the time or money? Could your students benefit from free book viewing online? Well, Google has launched something that could help: Google Books.

Google Books allows you to search through a wide variety of books and even provides access to the content of those books. This means that you can read whole books online, although some authors and publishers only allow a few pages to be read. Google books categorizes books into subject matter, has a great searching capacity and even allows you to create your own library where you can recommend books and write reviews.

The topics that can be found within the archives of Google Books are vast. A simple search of books on teaching pulled up 131,582 results. This could be a tool that may help in your research and something that may help your students in your classes as well.

What do you think about Google Books?

Less Budgeting for Books This Semester?

ctl — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:36:00 +0000

You can probably walk by the University Bookstore right now and see how ecstatic parents and students are about having to purchase books for the upcoming semester. In a little under two weeks the lines of happy students will be even longer and more of the grim faces. The bookstore clerks are no strangers to the complaints from people buying their books. First-year students taking certain introductory classes will probably be a little grumpy when they have to purchase their first course textbook for some course.

Wouldn’t it be a novelty if a university told you not to worry about having to budget a handful of money for your books? Actually, there are some community colleges that are buying the rights to popular textbooks and allowing students online access to the textbooks. If you read an article by Andy Guess on Insidehighered.com you can discover how some community colleges have managed to gain access to popular textbooks. There are a handful of other university systems around the country who are also putting books online for students to simply read it on their computer monitors, and not have to spend a chunk of change for a book they will use for a couple months.

BGSU is actually part of this “online books” movement. The Jerome Library here at BGSU has more than one thousand books that students have open access to. Students are invited to go and chat with one of the librarians and learn about how they could possibly save some money. Maybe one of the books that your instructor has you reading is listed in one of the networks of online books that you can read and use for free online.

ODCE Conference: BGSU Faculty/Staff Presentations

ctl — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:29:00 +0000

The following BGSU community members presented last week at the 2008 Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference (ODCE), which is sponsored by the Ohio Learning Network (OLN), Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), and OhioLINK.

Colleen Boff & Gwen Evans (University Libraries)
Hi Tech, High Touch, Low Cost: Library Instructional Tools Across a First Year Experience Program

Terry L. Herman, Melanie Alt, Daniel Lemmerbrock, Christopher Pappas, Todd Pavlack, Christopher Pittman and Mark Stevens (College of Technology)
Virtual Learning Environments: A Look into the Future

Michael Kudela (IDEAL) & Garrick L Ducat (Mercy College of NW Ohio)
Creative Commons: Share Your Work, Keep Your Rights and Learn from Others

Connie Molnar & Carolyn Matzinger (IDEAL)
The Metamorphosis of Biology 101: Face-to-face to Online Course Delivery

Carrie Rathsack (CTLT)
Today’s Digital Tools for Enhancing Future Learning

For more information about ODCE or the conference events and resources, including the keynote address by Chancellor, Eric Fingerhut:

Website – http://www.oln.org/conferences/ODCE2008/
Wiki – http://wiki.conference.oln.org/
Blog – http://blog.conference.oln.org/

Scholarly Publishing 1.1? (On the way to 2.0)

ctl — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:57:00 +0000

According to a PBS blog post by Andy Carvin, a group of Harvard faculty recently:

unanimously adopted a new policy that would allow them to retain the copyright of scholarly research. As a result, students and the public at large could have much greater access to these materials online than ever before.

For more information about the transition (or transformation) in scholarly communication and publishing:

SPARC (Association of Research Libraries – Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) – including information on author’s rights (yes, you may have them… if you ask!) and open access

CreateChange.org is “an educational initiative that examines new opportunities in scholarly communication, advocates changes that recognize the potential of the networked digital environment, and encourages active participation by scholars and researchers to guide the course of change.”