Open education, copyright and open licensing in a digital world : my journey

Copyright Case Study (MCQ) Mary is a researcher working in an Australian University. She is co-authoring a paper with Deirdre, one of her PhD students. Their paper has been accepted for publication in an online journal subject to the authors clarifying the status of some maps they wish to include in their manuscript. Mary and Deirdre want  to include in their paper a map of Australia which shows the location of the Woomera Rocket Range.  This map , published on page 71 of Fire Across the Desert / Peter Morton is based on 1946 Press reports. The book was originally published by the Australian Government Publishing Service in 1989. The AGPS has since ceased operations but used to fall under the purview of the Attorney General’s Department. The Woomera Rocket Range falls within the Woomera Prohibited Area  (WPA) which is regulated by legislation and is a Defence premise used for the testing of war materiel under the management of the Royal Australian Air Force. The WPA is an i

The ABC of Copyright This is a great read. Not only does this book provide a fantastic insight into how civil and common laws across jurisdictions operate on author protections and user rights but it also got me thinking how the various caveats in treaties and legislation have impacted on the potential for harmonisation of rights across jurisdictions. For me, where supporting my institutional community to understand copyright is at the heart of what I do, this statement: The protection of moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production is... recognized as a human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). has got me thinking about re-framing the way we should be thinking and talking about copyright rights and protections. The framework of 'Open' and 'Free' which underpin OER must surely integral to this?   #LiDA103

Berne Convention Having just completed reading the Berne Convention, methinks a reread of the Australian Copyright Act might now be in order. There is so much latitude in the provisions of the Berne Convention for jurisdictions to apply their own interpretations and then enforce through legal processes. It seems to me that the harmony that was perhaps the initial intent of the Convention has been progressively lost over time through the assertion of self interest groups.#LiDA103

Navigating OER: The Library’s Role in Bringing OER to Campus #LiDA103 In this article, the authors explore some of the challenges involved in garnering buy-in from their Faculty to transition from deeply seated and well-established partnerships with publishers in favour of OER, which at the time, was unfamiliar territory for many of their Faculty. I was particularly interested in this article because the institution at which I work is at a very similar stage in terms of getting buy-in from the broader University community and I am looking for ideas that we can adapt at our institution. Amongst the challenges identified by the authors were  - the seemingly unstructured organisation of OER's on multiple sites and platforms possible incompatibilities between different software to support a seamless remix of content from multiple sources. For example, remixing content from Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF encouraging members of Faculty to engage with of OER's without a