Openly licensed educational resources (OER) are an untapped opportunity for free, quality resources to expand a school library collection. As with any library asset, they must be evaluated to ensure that they are in fact free and openly licensed. The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) has created an OER repository and has learned…

School librarians work with a variety of individuals; the largest groups are usually made up of students (most often K-12, but perhaps also preschoolers), teachers, and administrators. However, it is also possible that school staff, students' parents and guardians, and even the community at large might participate in school library functions and…

In this article, the author states that school librarians can contribute to an atmosphere that supports intellectual freedom by drawing attention to the subtle messages about community values--messages that are communicated by virtue of what is included or excluded from curricular and co-curricular offerings. The author address issues with…

This selected bibliography contains 63 publications and 21 Web sites that can help librarians learn more about how they can use the metaphor of the information commons to advocate for the public's information assets. (MES)

Describes several projects aimed at building the Information Commons, including: Knowledge Conservancy plans to create a database of all freely available digitized content; the Universal Library, a project with the long-term goal of providing free, online access to all books; and several projects of the Creative Commons intended to build a robust…

Discusses the control of digital content and the stakes for libraries and our democratic culture. Highlights include copyright term extension, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, use of contract law to limit the public domain, database legislation, trademarks versus the public domain, the void in our cultural vocabulary, and the concept of the…

Explains the copyright policy battles now pending in Congress and the courts, with a discussion of what they mean for free speech, access to information, and democratic culture in school libraries. (MES)