This study examines whether graduate students in STEM fields at an R1 institution understand copyright law. Thirty graduate students participated in semi-structured interviews related to copyright and ownership. This study revealed that these students often conflate issues around copyright and plagiarism and have little understanding of their own…

Author contracts in scholarly publishing serve to outline the rights and permissions for each party in the use and redistribution of a work throughout the life of its copyright term. Although rights and licensing expectations for open access publishing--the "open access ethos"--have been detailed in the Budapest Declaration, Plan S…

During (and after) the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, educational communities have employed distance education to reach their students. However, not all districts are aware of the legal requirements of using instructional materials in a virtual setting. In recognition of the growth of virtual learning environments, Congress passed the…

This article summarizes the results of interviews with Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) service hub participants to determine whether and how standardized rights metadata is included in their digital collections. Providing accurate standardized rights metadata is crucial to communicating with patrons regarding how they can use objects in…

Copyright has an impact on nearly every aspect of the information professions, from developing collections to creating local policy and educating patrons. Given the apparent importance of copyright to information professionals, it is crucial that librarians and other information professionals be prepared for copyright-related responsibilities…

This usability study investigates how instructors in a university setting integrate resources into their Learning Management System (LMS) course shells and explores barriers and incentives for doing so. Findings suggest that obstacles encountered while appropriately incorporating licensed library resources in a D2L LMS are substantial. Although…

This paper describes the results of a study to compare contemporary e-journal licenses from two research universities in the United States and Spain in terms of e-reserves, interlibrary loan, text and data mining, authors' rights and treatment of copyright exceptions, usage statistics, governing law, data privacy, and obligations entailing…

Information literacy is a crucial topic in the library science profession. The information needs and perceptions of the information literacy of preservice and early-career school librarians were explored in this research using a survey and interviews distributed nationally over a 5-month time frame. These participants, who have been employed in…

Ithaka S+R launched a project in collaboration with a cohort of libraries to identify challenges and develop strategies for streaming media acquisitions. The findings from the first part of this project--a comprehensive national survey that tracked the streaming media strategies libraries are adopting and the challenges they are facing-- was…

In the spring of 2017, digital librarians and digital collection managers at member institutions of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) were surveyed on practices and policies surrounding takedown requests in openly accessible digital collections. The survey collected basic demographic information surrounding the digital repositories…

The results of this study illustrate that one-shot training sessions are effective in aiding librarians in academic libraries to engage with fair use. This study used testing both before and after an expert-led three-hour training session on fair use for academic librarians to measure their confidence and comprehension. The results, though limited…

A solid professional performance on the part of academic librarians at present calls for adequate knowledge about copyright law, not only for the development of their own tasks without infringing the law, but also to guide and provide pertinent advice for library users (faculty and students). This paper presents the results of an online survey of…

In this study, deans and directors of academic libraries were surveyed about intellectual freedom. The survey found that most respondents said they rarely think about intellectual freedom yet said it was "somewhat" or "very" important in their libraries. Most did not have formal intellectual freedom policies; they often relied…

Libraries offer a mix of options to serve the film studies curriculum: streaming video, DVDs on Reserve, and streaming DVDs through online classrooms. Some professors screen films and lend DVDs to students. But how do students obtain the films required for their courses? How would they prefer to do so? These are among the questions explored using…

The study was undertaken to understand the propensity for increased engagement with open educational practices (OEP), to include methods prioritizing student-centered teaching & learning, and awareness, use, and development of open educational resources (OER) among higher education faculty in Kyrgyzstan. The study employed a mixed-methods…