Archives contain records that document the lives, cultures, and histories of Indigenous communities that are often organized within a governmental or colonial creation structure. This structure can create barriers to access for Indigenous communities and researchers that depend on those records. This article re-imagines archival methods of…

While universities are intensely protective of revenue streams related to intellectual property interests for the institution and professors, the financial and legal interests of students in the entrepreneurial process have largely been overlooked. This lack of attention, both in universities and in the literature, is intriguing given the…

Administrators in higher-education institutions are faced with an often-conflicting landscape of laws, court cases, adopted practices, rules of thumb, and folk wisdom related to copyright concerns on their campuses. Ask any ten faculty member and receive ten different responses about what constitutes fair use, who owns content created for courses,…

The information giants, Google being the largest, trade every day and build high-valuation mega-opolies on the back of very personal information without including their sources of value with any tangible return for their investment of exclusive data. The time has come to ask the question whether the grand bargain of "cool tools" in…

This paper presents a policy decision tree for digital information management in academic libraries. The decision tree is a policy guide, which offers alternative access and reproduction policy solutions according to the prevailing circumstances (for example acquisition method, copyright ownership). It refers to the digital information life cycle,…

Most college faculty approach plagiarism as a moral issue: a violation of the rules of the university and a violation of the behavioral standards of the academic world. However, business communication faculty can enhance students' educations by approaching plagiarism as one aspect of a larger business issue: the protection of intellectual…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a quarterly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This issue includes the following articles: (1) Digitization of Special Collections and Archives: Legal and Contractual Issues (Peter B.…

Aaron Sorkin has a passion for words--his signature movie and television scripts are fast talking, jargon laced, word pictures that are instantly recognizable. "The Social Network," Sorkin's 2011 Academy Award Winning movie about the founding of Facebook, Inc., offers more than just witty banter; it provides an ideal teaching platform for…

After several years of false starts, the universe of digital books seems at last poised to expand dramatically. Readers should view this expansion with both excitement and wariness. Excitement because digital books could revolutionize reading, making more books more findable and more accessible to more people in more ways than ever before.…

According to the "work made for hire doctrine" of the Copyright Act, the creators of artistic and literary works are not legally granted ownership of works created in the course of employment; ownership rests with the employer. However, through "de facto" custom and court dicta, academics may enjoy a "teacher exception" that grants them copyright…

The Digital Rights Management (DRM), a technology that allows copyright owners to regulate and manage their content when it is disseminated in a digital format, has sparked an escalating battle over copyright protection and fair use. The stakes are huge for content producers, consumers, and libraries. DRM is the reason why some patrons cannot…

The purpose of this advisory is to assist academic staff in retaining copyright ownership in the articles they publish in journals. Without copyright ownership, academic staff can lose control of their own work and may no longer be entitled to email it to students and colleagues, post it on a personal or course web page, place it in an…

Discusses the accelerating trend of ownership rights in digital property, specifically copyright, which is in contrast to the stated legislative purpose of copyright law to be technologically neutral. Topics include the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); and TEACH (Technology, Education…

Reviews copyright legislation and its impact since 1998 from the perspective of education professionals affected primarily as intellectual property users. Offers pertinent historical and philosophical context and stresses the importance of balance between intellectual property ownership and its fair and other exceptional uses. (Author/LRW)

Whether by choice or necessity, colleges and universities are in competition with each other for the burgeoning web-based course market. Spurred by the growth of the for-profits such as the University of Phoenix, institutions have reasons, both practical and philosophical,"...to secure a position in ownership and control of faculty-produced…