January 2009 Archives

On December 9, 2008, Melanie Dulong de Rosnay gave a presentation at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society about a distance education program that is designed to help librarians navigate copyright issues.  Fortunately, the Berkman Center recorded this presentation and made it available to view online or access through a portable device (i.e. audio or video versions for iPods and other media players).  Melanie is part of the Copyright for Librarians project at Harvard.  They appear to have a blog about the course, although it doesn't seem to be updated often.  Still, it provides some background on this project and the course.

The Center for Social Media released a guide called "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education", which describes five principles that reflect consensus thinking of how fair use applies to K-12 education, higher education, and non-profit organizations that offer educational programs -- especially related to media literacy education (a very important topic!).  Each of these principles includes a description of an educational application, the principle of fair use that is being employed, and any limitations to the use of that fair use principle. Also, for some additional insight into this report, Henry Jenkins, director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, wrote an excellent endorsement of this document.