ARL to Educators: Go Ahead, Mash Up

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/educationalfairusetoday.pdf
Three recent court decisions should reassure educators who wonder whether it is legal for them to re-use copyrighted material. In a paper released last month by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Jonathan Band explains recent legal decisions that permit extensive copying and display of copyrighted material on commercial sites because the uses involve “repurposing and recontextualization.” In Perfect 10 V. Amazon.com, the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a thumbnail-sized image of a copyrighted photograph is a “transformative use” and is therefore protected by the fair use privilege by the copyright act. Similar rulings were recently handed down in favor of an artist who re-used portions of a fashion photograph, and a publisher who reproduced copyrighted posters in a book. Band’s paper”Educational Fair Use Today” is available for free download at the ARL website.

Sullivan Honored by Engineering Academy

http://www.nae.edu/nae/awardscom.nsf/weblinks/JMAN-7A4L7N?OpenDocument
Jacquelyn Sullivan, co-PI of Engineering Pathway, has been awarded the 2006 Bernard M. Gordon Prize by the National Academy of Engineering. The $500,000 prize was awarded to Sullivan and co-founder Larry Carlson for their 15-year-old Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, which has become a national model for K-16 engineering education. “The recognition will help our program springboard into the future,” says Sullivan. “We will learn more about how youth form relationships with engineering at an early age, and how hands-on, authentic learning can connect young men and women (especially those under-represented in engineering) with the profession on a personal level.”

Landmark Victory for Open Access

http://www.arl.org/sparc
A three-year lobbying effort by the Open Access movement bore fruit the day after Christmas, when President Bush signed an appropriations bill containing a provision that requires the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide open public access to all of the research it funds. The victory is not complete, according to a January 7 post on the website of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). New NIH research does not have to be published for a year, and the Association of American Publishers has vowed to fight. But the new rule is the first Open Access mandate for a major public funding agency in the US, so it’s a landmark.