Week 9: Copyright

I haven't really experienced teachers using course packs, but most of my professors assign books or multiple journal articles every week for class readings. We had a librarian visit our department once who recommended that teachers use the permalink for journal articles instead of downloading the article and uploading it to an LMS because clicking the permalink gives the library data they need to see how many people are using a particular database. Obviously, if librarians see a database getting a lot of use, they will be more likely to renew the subscription. I think this practice is a good way to abide by fair use policies because it avoids the need for course packs and may even show how much attention a specific journal or even a specific article is receiving. I would think that would be helpful information for the library to have.  

Personally, I don't see a problem with professors scanning book chapters to share with their students because, to take this back to last week's topic of authorship, I would appreciate as an author if my work was shared. Academic publishing isn't really lucrative; the point is to create scholarship that helps one gain tenure. To give this project more impact, it would be great if all academic publications were turned over to a Creative Commons site after a certain amount of time because then the number of times the article/book is accessed could be tracked. I think it would also allow more people, especially those who don't have access to a fantastic university library like ours, to access that scholarship and benefit from its ideas spreading.