Libraries and Accurate Information about The Coronavirus [Library2.020]

Covid-19 | Libraries | Public Health Information

As designated essential disaster services, libraries are poised to serve a role in the national response to the Coronavirus and COVID-19. Some changes to libraries as a public gathering place may be temporarily required, but our mission of sharing information will likely continue unchanged. They will remain great resources to access credible medical information and connect to resources to help you and your community.

Libraries: Open for Information
Your local library is a great place to turn for information about COVID-19, the disease caused by the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Not only are libraries a trusted source of vetting information, there is a long history of libraries as a destination for answers to health questions.

In the case of a public health situation like the COVID-19 outbreak, your local library is especially beneficial because it is local. In the United States, public health is addressed at a county level with statewide organizations. That means your local library is typically already connected to the local public health officials. Depending on local measures put into place, some changes to library programs may be required, but online services like medical databases, eBooks, digital audiobooks, will still be accessible with a library card allowing you to find credible information and even entertainment.

https://www.libraries2020.org/librariescoronavirus

Public Statement: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research

Copyright | Fair Use | Online instruction | Remote learning | Covid-19

Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research

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March 13, 2020

This Statement is meant to provide clarity for U.S. colleges and universities about how copyright law applies to the many facets of remote teaching and research in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. We write this as copyright specialists at colleges, universities, and other organizations supporting higher education in the U.S. and Canada who work every day with faculty, staff, and librarians to enable them to make ethical and legal choices about copyright issues in online teaching.  

The United States is in a time of crisis. As of this writing, more than 200 universities and colleges have moved to remote teaching. These moves aim to promote public health by slowing the spread of the disease, while maintaining at least some of the important functions higher education plays in teaching, learning, and research. We have heard concerns that copyright may pose impediments to a rapid shift to remote instruction, or conversely, that copyright is not relevant. While legal obligations do not automatically dissolve in the face of a public health crisis, U.S. copyright law is, thankfully, well equipped to provide the flexibility necessary for the vast majority of remote learning needed at this time.

Fair Use

Copyright law in the United States is made to support teaching, research, and learning. This stems from its Constitutional purpose, which is “to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts.”^[1] One critical feature of copyright law is fair use,^[2] a flexible users’ right that allows the use of copyrighted works without permission. It accommodates a wide variety of circumstances, including new and rapidly evolving situations. In the words of one of our colleagues, April Hathcock, “fair use is made for just these kinds of contingencies.”

To analyze whether a particular use is fair, courts balance four factors. The “heart of the fair use inquiry” lies in the first factor – the purpose and character of the use.^[3] Courts favor uses where the purpose is to benefit the public, even when that benefit is not “direct or tangible.”^[4]

Even under normal circumstances, courts favor educational uses because of their broad public benefits.^[5] While there are no fair use cases squarely addressing copying to help minimize a public health crisis, the other wide variety of public benefits cited by courts leads us to believe that this purpose would weigh extremely heavily in favor of fair use. For example, in the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust case,^[6] the court made it clear that providing access to persons with disabilities was a strong public interest that weighed heavily in the fair use assessment. Similarly, other courts have found that allowing reproduction of the Zapruder film documenting Kennedy's assassination was in the public interest,^[7] and allowing redistribution of leaked internal memos about problems with electronic voting machines also favored fair use.^[8] 

The benefit to the public in providing remote coursework is obvious when it enables teaching to continue in the face of social distancing measures or quarantine, or when access to physical library materials is impossible. The public benefit of these measures is without a doubt of at least equal importance as in these cases.

The second factor examines the nature of the work used—is it more factual or creative, published or not? In cases like this, the second factor “has rarely played a significant role in the determination of a fair use dispute.”^[9] For remote teaching in the COVID-19 situation, the analysis should be the same. Read more....

How to be a better online teacher [Chronicle of Higher Education] : Advice guide by Flower Darby

Online teaching | Online instruction | Distance learning |Pedagogy

Whether you’ve taught online a lot or a little, chances are you didn’t enjoy it as much as teaching in person. Maybe you didn’t experience that fizz after a particularly invigorating face-to-face class. Indeed, according to a 2017 Educause survey, only 9 percent of academics prefer to teach “in a completely online environment.” That means a whopping 91 percent of us don’t. And I suspect that a good majority of that 91 percent would prefer to teach anywhere but online.

Clearly, many academics don’t see the value of online courses or of trying to become a better online teacher. Almost none of us set out to be great online teachers when we decided to go to graduate school. We’ve spent years in campus classrooms, but we don’t have the same depth and breadth of experience in the online classroom, as either students or teachers. Most of us don’t know how to teach online or how to get better at it — and we may not be motivated to learn. Even more likely, we may not feel like we have time to learn.

Read article:

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-online-teaching

You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do?

Research | Libraries | Access | Free resources

Investigating solutions for frustrated scholars, nonprofits, independent learners, and the rest of us.

Jake Orlowitz

Nov 15, 2017 · 15 min read

The world of publishing is evolving frantically, while it remains frustratingly fragmented and prohibitively expensive for many. If you’re a student who just left your academic library behind only to discover you are now locked out of the stacks; a startup researching water usage in Africa and keep hitting paywalls; a local nonprofit that studies social change activism, but all the latest papers cost $30 per read… This article is for you.

https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/youre-a-researcher-without-a-library-what-do-you-do-6811a30373cd

Video Conference | Chat reference

Read article from PCMAG

Smithsonian Open Access: 2.8 Million Images Are Yours to Use