It's Academic

Forgotten, neglected and orphan books printed between 1923 – 1941, are on a new path thanks to an easy to understand section of 108 (Title 17 US Code)m Internet Archive and ALA Advocacy.

Professor Townsend Gard’s paper on “Creating a Last Twenty (L20) Collection: Implementing Section 108(h) in Libraries, Archives and Museums”, advocates for libraries and archives to take advantage of the exception to U.S. copyright law.

The library or archives may reproduce, distribute, display, or perform in facsimile or digital form any work in the last 20 years of its copyright term for purposes of preservation, research or scholarship. This change to Section 108 was made to address the concerns of libraries and non-profit educational institutions planning to reproduce and distribute materials that would have fallen into the public domain if the copyright term extension act [of 1998] had not been passed. This means that, although the term of copyright has been extended by 20 years [beyond 1922], libraries may copy or digitize works that are in the last 20 years of their copyright term. In order to take advantage of this exemption, however, libraries should make a reasonable effort to determine that:

• the work is not subject to normal commercial exploitation,
• a copy cannot be obtained at a reasonable price, and
• the copyright holder has not filed notice regarding either of the above conditions

Libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) are encouraged to further advocate by:

• Taking advantage of legal exception to U.S. copyright law.
• Creating educational opportunities through webinars or conference programs
• Creating and testing checklists for implementing the given copyright exceptions, (see Jennifer Howard’s Slate.com “Copyright Mavericks” article)
• Working with colleagues who specialize in digitization, metadata, and copyright guidelines and practices

As libraries and archives are the recipient of this legal exception, we should apply it when applicable opportunities arise in our daily work, to show that the exception is an important one and to provide our patrons continued access to information.

See more – Cen Cheng April 11,2018 – https://www.rusaupdate.org/2018/04/what-you-need-to-know-about-library-public-domain

What counts as a mode of scholarly discourse has changed and continues to change. Scholarship today is a plexus, and intellectual output takes on an ever-widening array of variegation. Yet the paradigm for evaluating academic contributions is still very hierarchical and somewhat arbitrary. To look at the sum of books, articles and papers produced at the end of an academic career is interesting, but not necessarily informative about the paths of inquiry and detours of significance along the journey, especially if they are highly collaborative. Also, past performance, as the old saw goes, certainly is not indicative of any future success. Why then do promotion and tenure in higher education still have the very conservative threshold of publish or perish? What does it even mean to publish anymore?

Image from presentation on research workflows
NPOS Workflow-perspective-Bosman-Kramer.pptx
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5065534.v1

Librarians can be in the forefront in answering questions such as these, because we can see the reticulation more objectively. While we occasionally have a vested interest in promotion and tenure policies, our vantage-point helps us to see more impartially the burgeoning ways scholarly research is openly communicated. We have, slowly at times and sometimes out of necessity, adopted format agnosticism. We also need to be aware of better markers for evaluation than just counting. Librarians are not usually expert enough to evaluate the quality of scholarship in terms of what it contributes to a field of study, but we do have a unique view on how, when and where scholarship is publicly delivered, discovered and employed. It may very well be too controversial at many institutions to include the librarian’s perspective in evaluating a faculty member’s contributions to an academic discipline, but we should give our teaching and research partners cause to call upon us for insight and librarians need to be ready.

One entree would be to continuously familiarize ourselves with how research workflows are currently being laid open. One rather ambitious social project that gives academic librarians a purview, which originated with librarians Bianca Kramer and Jeroen Bosman at Utrecht University: “400+ Tools and innovations in scholarly communication” (http://bit.ly/innoscholcomm-list). Another good first step would be to take part in shaping how we even describe what it is scholars produce. Beware, though, some faculty may still very well bristle when librarians say they provide research assistance for new forms of scholarly communication, such as digital projects, products and artifacts.

Under the leadership of Kelly Clever, Public Services Librarian at Seton Hill University, the Reeves Library Undergraduate Research Award was created in 2014 to recognize and encourage the development of information fluency in resource-based research.  This has been a wonderful way not only to honor students, but also to increase awareness of the library and its resources.

“Collection”-based research (i.e., field/laboratory research, original literary criticism, or creative works are judged based only on their literature review/discussion sections and not on the portions of the project consisting of original work). Research projects in either traditional (e.g., academic paper) or multimedia (e.g., podcast, website, video, etc.) formats may be submitted.

Research projects created during the previous academic year’s Spring semester or the entire current academic year can be considered. There is no length requirement for works submitted. One entry is accepted per student.   A faculty member must sponsor each submission by completing a recommendation form. The faculty sponsor may be the instructor who assigned the project, or the student’s advisor. The student must submit the project being entered, a completed application form, and a brief (250-500 word) introduction to the project and a discussion of the research process.

The student’s name is removed from the body of the project to facilitate blind review.  Using a rubric, a panel of faculty and librarians judges the research. To make things easier, information is uploaded to the Canvas online learning system, which allows speed grading.

Each award recipient is recognized at Honors Convocation and receives a monetary prize in the amount of $250. One award is given to a first-year or sophomore and a second to a junior or senior.