Fair Use
As a professor of New Media, I’m often finding myself talking about the appropriation of cultural content - and frequently explaining to students the important distinctions between appropriation and plagiarism. One issue that muddies the water for student is the concept of Fair Use, and I think that holds true for academic partitioners as well who are afraid (for good cause in recent years) of using content they are entitled to employ under fair use guidelines. There’s a very good article in the Chronicle that describes the basics and can help us all feel a bit more at ease with the employ of Fair Use.
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I’d be interested in hearing that answer : )
My guess is that this is an issue that many people think they know a bit about but with some pushing it becomes clear that they know very little. Yet they make up rules and policies regarding its local institutional use…
You called it. The people I asked have most of the research of our library and archives going through them. When I asked they were kind of thrown off and gave me some answer I’m not convinced is real. Basically they said, “well we aren’t plagerizing because we are highlighting our institution’s collection and if someone were to come to us, the original authors they keep good records of where they got the information”...There is one more big wig I’m going to ask when I see him but I’m pretty sure he is going to have the same answer…
Hehe - I wish I could say I was surprised. But this is of course the most frustrating element of it: people making policies regarding issues for which they have no real comprehension…
PS: I added a link back to the home page form the comments for your convenience : )
PPS: Now you can help me test it out!
Update: I asked the “big wig” for the archives and he FINALLY gave me an answer I could accept:
1. He said that it is following journalistic practices in informing the public. Newspapers and the like don’t show their sources for background info unless it is a direct quote in their attempts to get facts out to the public. This is why as our History and Heritage articles have a generic statement also. BUT if we quote we have to say something like “As Joe Smoe says in his book Example Title, “Something profound.” But if we were to put the information in an academic journal we would have to source everything we use.
2. We aren’t making money off of it.
3. Copyrights are only for 75 years anyways (because History people don’t use books printed more recent?!)
As in response to the link back to the main blog page…this made me so happy lol, it is about time! It works wonderfully!
Haha - Whew! As long as the link works…
But I’m glad you were finally able to get some answers. I DO think that more people should be knowledgeable about this; but at least someone was. And, good for you for pushing until you got a real answer!
I fight with this almost on a daily basis but in a different form. When doing research for our exhibits, educational pamphlets, and articles in general I always use our Library & Archives because…why wouldn’t I use millions of materials located in my building.
However while the manuscripts, diaries, oral histories, etc are owned by us (so we can do whatever we want with the information), a lot of my stuff uses books also. But we aren’t required to source things when we put them online (which blows my mind that I can get away with using something with a little sentence like: information here was taken from the thousands of manuscripts, books, etc of our library and archives.)EVEN in the event that I need to quote something.
Our museum is free so it’s not like we are making a profit from it but still I don’t get it and I haven’t really asked anyone about it yet…maybe I will.