Copyright & Intellectual Property Webinar - 4/25/11

Listened in on an informative webinar with MnScu's System Director for Intellectural Property, Gary Hunter. His presentation reinforced many of the practices I have supported at Minnesota West such as the need to see if streaming rights are available for purchase before converting a DVD into streaming format. Also the discussion about being conscious of the fact that many "consumables" (e.g., workbooks, tests, quizzes) oppose fair use guidelines.
The discussion about e-Textbooks and course packs was interesting, too. The recommendation is to always cite where information is from and to include documentation about copyright clearance from each copyright holder in the coursepack so it is clear that all is in compliance. I do wonder how much we are moving away from printed coursepacks and as we transition into providing readings via the digital D2L environment how much this is/will be monitored?
Other topics of interest that were discussed included public performance rights (always necessary for entertainment purposes) and concern over using Google Images (suggestion is to assume they are copyrighted).
In the discussion about streaming video, reference to a document entitled Educational Video Streaming: A Short Primer by Arnold P. Lutzker, Esq. was referred to as a good read on this topic is litigation is underway in CA.

18th Annual Minitex Interlibrary Loan Conference - May 19, 2009

I enjoyed attending my first ILL conference. Marshall Breedings' morning presentation (Next Generation Library Automation and Its Implications for Resource Sharing) was thought-provoking. As he described it, this is his 'niche.' His Library Technology Guides will be worthwhile to keep tabs on: http://librarytechnology.org/. He is very involved in the OLE project which we also have heard about at previous MnPALS meetings.

During the MINITEX Update, Bill DeJohn mentioned a resource for licensing and e-journals: http://librarycopyright.net/ . I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but this topic is of interest to me so I anticipate I will explore it a bit more in the future.

The afternoon session was more hands-on and was led by Ray Wilson: Seven Quality Improvement Tools for your Workplace. The tools he reviewed were * Agenda * Affinity Diagram * Check Sheet * Operational Definition * Pareto Chart * Cause & Effect (Fishbone) * Cause Analysis * Force Field * Multivoting * Plus/Delta. I had heard of many of these before, but it's always good to have a refresher and to find ways to immediately implement some of them.