Open License Education & Consultation

Introduction

Project managers in library publishing are often librarians. With this in mind, advising faculty on copyright and Creative Commons may be a good place to start when looking for ways to support authors, since it capitalizes on existing expertise.

This will be critical information for your authors to thoroughly understand before they begin a project.

By working to ensure an understanding early on, you will avoid additional work later. This is especially true when it comes to working with openly licensed images, graphs and illustrations.

Here are related recommendations from Shane Nackerud, Technology Lead, Library Initiatives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

"Faculty are used to borrowing liberally, especially from something like Google Images, for their course content and slide decks. Getting them to understand that they should use openly licensed images, and that they should look for and reuse existing openly licensed content, is surprisingly challenging. Faculty seem to understand attribution and copyright when it comes to text, but images seem to be fair game for many of them! The nuances of all the content they usually bring together to produce their course content can present some interesting challenges, both in how to explain best practices about open publishing to faculty, and how to successfully find openly licensed replacements that help faculty reach their educational goals for their students."

Adapted from Managing Assets Links to an external site. in Authoring Open Textbooks by Open Education Network (CC BY Links to an external site.)

Recommendation: To ensure understanding, schedule a check-in with author(s) once they have completed the first chapter. That way you can review and clarify what is and isn't open, and resolve misunderstandings.

Finding Openly Licensed Materials

Images

A great place to start looking for images is the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER). They have a resource list Links to an external site. for finding openly licensed digital media. It includes links to the Creative Commons search engine Links to an external site., which searches the Creative Commons sections of Flickr, along with the Public Domain-licensed collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Links to an external site., the New York Public Library Links to an external site., and the Rijksmuseum Links to an external site..

Wherever you search, be sure to consider your audience. Which photos will resonate for student readers? Inclusivity is key. For example, the Gender Spectrum Image Collection Links to an external site. is a stock photo library featuring images (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) of trans and non-binary models. The library aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities. Another images website is Unsplash Links to an external site.. The images posted there don't require attribution.

Videos

YouTube remains the best place to search for video clips. In your search, you can use the filter to limit your query to videos that have a Creative Commons license.

Adapted from Finding Openly Licensed Images and Videos Links to an external site. in OER Creation and Adaption by BCcampus (CC BY)

Tracking Images Template

The author and/or project manager will need to track where images and other remixed information originated, so that when it's time to publish there is a clear record for providing attribution. Here is a template you can copy and use Links to an external site..

Attribution

Proper attribution is important, and Creative Commons provides guidance Links to an external site. on how to give attribution, sometimes called TASL. Often the content author or publisher defines how they want their work attributed. You can usually find it in the front matter. 

One useful tool is the Open Attribution Builder Links to an external site. from Open Washington, which automatically generates an attribution for you based on the information you give it.

Be sure to clearly associate the attribution with the specific content, so that it's obvious what content was remixed from where. Generally, footers or references at the end of chapters work well. That way, the learning content isn't cluttered with attribution information that may distract the student.

When remixing a lot of existing open content, it's helpful to be clear about attribution, as well as what the author has changed.

Embedding and Linking to Material that is Not Open

When you can't find an openly licensed video, image, or other asset, the question often arises as to whether it's okay to link to or embed copyrighted material (all rights reserved). BCcampus Open Education, a publisher of open textbooks, provides guidance and recommendations in  Links to an external site.Embedding and Linking in Self-Publishing Guide Links to an external site. by BCcampus (CC BY).