J-DETT+611

Where I Start In Understanding Libraries and Stuff Author: Stuart Adams Created: 6/3/2011
 * DETT 611 Library and Intellectual Property Issues in Distance Education ** Summer 2011

// This is an excerpt from a previous post from my DEPM 622 Learning Journal. It seems relevant as a starting point for this course. //

In the beginnings of the college, there was, first, the library, a large collections of books. A library, being somewhat rare, was worthy of note. (For an interesting view of how our canon of knowledge has been preserved, read Thomas Cahill's //How the Irish Saved Civilization//). Libraries drew scholars, who accessed the books, read them and discussed them with other scholars, creating more scholarship and more books. All these scholars sitting around drew students. Hence, the institute of higher learning. Fast forward and we see progressive-minded folks who see the value of an educated populace creating this sort of institution in a less organic, but more rationalized way. Build a library and classrooms, bring in some scholars and get them to teach students and you have a state university (OK, you might also need a football team and a bar). Again, because they are scholars, they will engage in research and scholarship, as well.

It is important to note why the libraries are important. Books, in the past, were serious things. They carried an ethos of authority; they could be trusted.

So what does this look like in the future? To understand this, you have to add technology, the computer and the Internet. As more and more resources are available on the Internet, it begins to take on the function and appearance of a library. The scholars don't have to go to a central physical location where the books are. They can share across virtual space. They can discourse and do research across virtual space. And, as we know well, they can teach across virtual space. One's affiliations with a particular institution, its buildings and football team, are no longer what bounds the scholarly process. So, alliances and cooperative ventures between players in the field tend to expand their ability to do what the scholars of old did around a library. It also makes sense that publishers, who used to sell to libraries, would want a piece of the action.

Better to know than to Assume Author: Stuart Adams Created: 7/2/2011

I think that Crews point that there are alternatives that can be arrange given that there is noblack-letter or case law that supports the "Teacher Exception." The Institution and the teacher/author need to make explicit their understandings as to who owns and who has which rights tocreated materials. There is room in the law for "diversifying" the copyright and this approach could certainly be to the mutual benefit of the parties.

A key understandingis emerging for me that, in the digital world, and especially in onlinelearning, one must know about copyright laws and their applications and thenmake best use of them to gain preferred outcomes. Ignorance, reliance on traditions, or assumptions based on what one might thinkis "fair" are no defense and no match for understanding the rules ofthe game.