Copyright in the News: Foreign works amendment is valid

January 25th, 2012

On January 18, 2012, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision in the Golan v. Holder case. This case was a challenge to a 1994 amendment to the copyright law which restored copyright to foreign works that had been in the public domain in the United States. The law was in response to several treaties that the U.S. entered into to help facilitate trade with other countries. One of the issues raised during the trade negotiations was that many works which were still protected in their country of national origin were in the public domain in the U.S. thus causing economic harm to that country. The U.S. then enacted the copyright restoration amendment to address these concerns.

Golan, a music professor, had been using public domain works. When this law passed, he was no longer able to use many of the works and so he challenged the legality of the law. In his lawsuit against the United States, he claimed that Congress had overstepped their bounds by removing works from the public domain and providing them once again with copyright protection. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the authority under the U.S. Constitution to make changes to the copyright law and that this change was well within their purview. The restoration of copyright in foreign works amendment is valid.

Source: Donna Ferullo, ferullo@purdue.edu, (765) 494-0978

Purdue Provides Tools to Manage Research Plans and Data

January 10th, 2012

As noted in Fall 2010 Libraries Update, when the NSF issued a “mandate” in May 2010 for data management plans the University was quick to respond. And now the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) is available to researchers as resource for both creating data management plans, and for managing data. (http://research.hub.purdue.edu/)

As described at the website, PURR, “is a central hub and resource for research, collaboration, assistance, and information concerning data management.” In addition to providing resources for creating plans, the Libraries offer a “data reference” through an online tool on PURR. And they offer more in-depth consulting to discuss a range of issues related to research data: access, standards, citation and preservation. Since June, two new Libraries’ faculty have been added to work in this area, and now the Libraries is able to offer a tiered approach to data consulting.

Libraries’ faculty can advise on a variety of short term questions (data reference), such as where to find discipline specific metadata standards. They can also consult on developing approaches to handling data in new projects (data management planning), tailored to specific funders (NSF, NIH, etc.). They can work closely with researchers to help assess current research outputs (data curation profiling), identifying areas of data workflow that may need attention. And faculty in the Libraries’ Distributed Data Curation Center (D2C2) can collaborate with faculty to solve specific data related problems on funded proposals (applying library science to interdisciplinary research), such as “Integrating Spatial Educational Experiences (ISEE) into Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Curricula.”

Needless to say, Purdue Libraries have been ahead of the curve in data related research. Purdue Libraries’ faculty are not the only librarians in the country working in this area, as this is an evolving area in which all academic librarians are participating. But Purdue Libraries’ faculty have been studying research data sharing since February 2006, when Dean Mullins first visited the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to ask what they were planning to do about research data. In FY11, the Libraries and D2C2 submitted or participated in $5M in grant proposals related to data research.

For more information on current D2C2 projects, click here.

Purdue ePubs – additional access to Purdue research

January 10th, 2012

On November 21, 2011, the University Resources Policy Committee (URPC) recommended to the Academic Senate that it adopt a resolution that supports that peer-reviewed, scholarly articles published by Purdue faculty be deposited in Purdue ePubs digital repository. Deposit of the research article into Purdue ePubs does not replace the publication of record in the scholarly journal, citation is still to the publication in the scholarly journal. The pre-print deposited into Purdue ePubs increases the eyes on the publication, and will direct the reader to the publication of record for citation, etc.

The Senate will vote on the proposal at the January 23 meeting. For further information about the open access movement of leading institutions including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Duke, and Penn and Kansas, please click here. (Information related Open Access comes from the 2011 Open Access Week speakers from the University of Kansas.) If you have questions about the resolution before the Academic Senate contact Beth McNeil, associate dean for Academic Affairs, at memcneil@purdue.edu or (765) 496-2261.

Currently, several departments and units from around the university have collections in Purdue ePubs. The Birck Nanotechnology Center (BNC), uses Purdue ePubs to collate and display hundreds of articles and proceedings papers published by BNC faculty and staff.

With Purdue ePubs a simple online submission form makes uploading files easy. Information about copyright and tools provided by the Libraries ensure that authors retain the rights necessary to deposit their work. Discoverability tools embedded in Purdue ePubs facilitate indexing by Google Scholar among other specialized search engines. Stable, citable, openly accessible collections of papers help departments and centers promote their research output not only to academic colleagues, but also to policy makers and media outlets. As Timothy Sands, Provost and former director of the BNC notes, “Purdue ePubs greatly enhances access to the scholarly works of our faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows. We now have a very robust and impressive record of the Center’s scholarship and impact that has proven to be invaluable for recruiting and for solidifying our reputation as one of the top nanotechnology centers in the world.”

Why Purdue ePubs? Purdue ePubs is an open access repository and depositing into Purdue ePubs means the full-text of your publications is in Google Scholar, giving scholars around the world access to your work. Purdue ePubs tracks usage of publications, issues monthly download notifications to authors, and with Google Analytics allows authors to demonstrate global access and impact of their scholarship. Self-deposit in Purdue ePubs is at no additional cost to members of the Purdue community. Another benefit to the Purdue community Purdue ePubs offers is sustainable access, because when servers move or websites are reorganized a scholarly article accessible from a faculty members webpage may become inaccessible

Click here for more information about contributing to, or partnering with, Purdue ePubs.
Browse Purdue ePubs at www.purdue.edu/epubs.

New position to increase information literacy competencies

January 10th, 2012

The Purdue Libraries Information Literacy Program is making substantial progress in its campus-wide approach to information literacy (IL) consistent with the expectation that information literacy will be a core competency of the curriculum. The Libraries’ first Information Literacy Specialist, Clarence Maybee, assistant professor of library science, arrived in September from Colgate University to assume this important role.

How does Professor Maybee’s work differ from work of the Professor Sharon Weiner, Booker Chair in Information Literacy? The focus of Maybee’s work is primarily in the Libraries and on campus, whereas the Booker Chair has a strong external element as well as a leadership role in information literacy research. Maybee provides leadership for the Libraries’ Information Literacy Program; is working to integrate information literacy in courses, programs, and curricula; collaborates with campus partners to support information literacy initiatives; will design and implement a program of assessment of library-based instructional programs; and will assess and provide leadership in theory, pedagogy, and practice related to information literacy.

With Maybee in this new leadership role, the Libraries are positioned to work together to better develop information literacy (problem solving, critical thinking) competencies in Purdue students and thus contribute to their success as students, as our future workforce, and as informed citizens.

If you have questions about information literacy please contact the liaison librarian for your department or contact Clarence Maybee at cmaybee@purdue.edu or (765) 494-7603.

Building the 21st Century monograph collection

January 10th, 2012

The Purdue community has access to over three million books through the Libraries website, lib.purdue.edu. For the past few years the Libraries has also been adding electronic books, or “e-books,” to the collection. The e-books include over 750,000 digital versions of recent print books, from publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and many other academic publishers, as well as older materials in Early English Books Online (EEBO) and the Eighteenth Century Collection Online (ECCO). Some of the e-books are purchased as individual titles, selected by library faculty members or suggested by campus faculty and students. Others come as packages from major academic publishers, steeply discounted as part of CIC consortial deals. While many of the e-books are facsimiles of traditional academic monographs, the collection also includes full text access to tens of thousands of US government documents and even more documents available through databases such as ERIC and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. All are available in full-text through the Libraries catalog. And, Purdue’s e-Pubs is a full-text repository of Purdue publications, and includes over 20,000 full-text technical reports

This year, Purdue is participating in two projects with two major e-book vendors, providing access to an additional 80,000 new e-books.

And, finally, as a member of the HathiTrust, a partnership of major research libraries, Purdue has access to the 2.6 million items in the public domain, all of which available through the Purdue Libraries website.

For help with using e-books on the most popular commercial e-book readers, such as the Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader, click here. To recommend an e-book purchase, please contact the liaison librarian for your department.

Libraries standardizes reserve process across campus

January 10th, 2012

Many library resources in support of coursework, scholarship, and research are now provided electronically to the campus community, through the Libraries website. Libraries continues also to host print reserve materials across campus and has recently standardized its reserve policy for print reserves to lessen confusion for those using the reserve system and ensure that reserves are available to all students as equitably as possible. (Effective date: January 9, 2012)

Print reserves will continue to be held by request, behind the circulation desk and available for only a limited loan period. Submit print course reserve materials for spring semester by completing the form at www.lib.purdue.edu/coursereserves. Materials can be designated to a specific library, at either the two hour (standard) or one week loan period.

Reserve: 2 Hour Loan – These items can now leave the library where they are checked out, but must be returned to the circulation desk of the lending library. No reserve items can be kept overnight and all reserves must be returned before the lending library closes for the day, even if this means the loan period is shortened.

Reserve: 1 Week Loan – Will circulate for 1 week.

Also, please use the reserve form to have an item ordered to be placed on reserve that is not owned by the Libraries or is marked as “lost” or “missing” in the catalog www.lib.purdue.edu; be sure to include the ISBN.

Review of process for other reserve materials
Photocopies of Articles: Bring photocopied articles with complete citation information to the service desk of the library where you would like them to be on reserve. If an electronic version of the article is available, we can assist you with linking this to your course management system. All articles are subject to federal copyright law compliance.

Personal Copies: Libraries accepts personal copies to put on reserve, but due to copyright compliance, cannot accept items stating that it is an instructor or examination copy. Please bring personal copies of books or media to the service desk of the desired library. Print and complete the form at www.lib.purdue.edu/coursereserves and submit with personal copies.

Media: Media items can be placed on reserve at the Hicks Undergraduate Library using this form www.lib.purdue.edu/coursereserves. Media viewing equipment is available in Hicks. Media may be scheduled for classroom viewing at www.lib.purdue.edu/ugrl/mediasched2.html or contact Roger Strater at schedule@lib.purdue.edu or 49-5431.

For questions, contact Laurie Sadler sadlerl@purdue.edu or 49-46238.

Purdue Libraries archives exhibit to feature Purdue, U.S. Coast Guard pioneer Dorothy Stratton

January 9th, 2012

Purdue Libraries archives exhibit to feature Purdue, U.S. Coast Guard pioneer Dorothy Stratton

January 9th, 2012