CTRL Newsletter

How can Grace Library support you and your students throughout the semester? This list provides just some of the many ways we partner with faculty to build library resources into course content.

Locating Supplemental Resources

Campus librarians are available to help locate resources appropriate for your course. Whether you are looking for articles to assign as readings or trying to decide on which databases to recommend to your students, we will help you find the right materials.

Creating Course- or Subject-Specific Research Guides

Using LibGuides, we will work with you to create Research Guides designed to provide students with curated information on how to best perform research on a specific course or topic. In these Research Guides, we can link directly to peer reviewed journals, books, databases, and websites best suited to your field or course content.

Exploring & Evaluating Open Educational Resources

Curious about Open Educational Resources? Librarians can provide you with lists of OER publishers, directories, and platforms that you can use to locate these resources, as well as assist in the evaluation process.

Library & Information Literacy Instruction

Schedule a Library Instruction Consultation with a librarian. We will discuss your options when it comes to integrating library instruction into your course, either through an in-person or virtual course session or by embedding library tutorials into your course. 

Information Literacy & Research Skills Tutorials

Grace Library has ready-to-go Information Literacy and Research Skills modules that can be integrated directly into your course content in Brightspace. The current list of modules are: 

• Creating Effective Research Questions
• Conducting Library Research
• Qualitative & Quantitative Research
• Evaluating Sources
• Plagiarism & Citations
• AI in Higher Education

Each of these modules consists of short lessons designed to help students understand and navigate the research process with ease. Learn more here.

Copyright

Copyright law applies to the use, performance, and display of copyrighted works. All members of the University community—faculty, staff, and students—are expected to obtain permission from copyright owners for uses protected by copyright law.

The Copyright Act of 1976 provides "authors [and creators] of original works protection for their intellectual property in any work exhibiting minimal creativity and fixed in a tangible mode of expression." Copyright protections cover published or unpublished intellectual property in all formats and media by authors, artists, composers, and creators.

Grace Library's Copyright Policy prohibits the following:

• Copying and/or distribution of copyrighted work that exceeds the limits established by the Fair Use Doctrine.
• Illegal downloading, installing, or sharing the copyrighted electronic work of others.

Learn more about the Library's Copyright Policy here.

Fair Use

The general rule is that copyrighted work may not be appropriated by others through duplication or dissemination without the creator's permission. There are exceptions to copyright restrictions that apply to academic institutions.

Grace Library supports the use of copyrighted work that falls under the fair use doctrine, which is codified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. To qualify as fair use, the use of the copyrighted work must be used "for purposes such as criticism, comment...teaching, scholarship, or research," although this is not without limits.

For the use of copyrighted work to qualify as fair use, the following factors must be considered:

• The purpose and character of the use,
• The nature of the copyrighted work,
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

For more information, visit the U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index.

When determining what falls under fair use, we (your friendly campus librarians) recommend using tools such as the ALA's Fair Use Evaluator and the ALA's Exceptions for Instructors in U.S. Copyright Law tool. While these evaluation tools do not provide legal advice, they can help faculty members better understand fair use and evaluate how they are using materials in their courses.

Best Practices

While Grace Library cannot give legal advice, we do recommend these best practices when it comes to integrating materials into your courses:

• Upload or link to course materials in your Brightspace course shell instead of emailing them to your students. This ensures that only students currently enrolled in your course can access the materials.
• When using materials available through Grace Library, use permalinks to the library's online catalog in lieu of uploading a PDF to your course.
• Instructors should only assign materials that fit within the scope of the course content and objectives.
• Only the portion or amount of the work relevant to the educational objectives of the course should be used.
• Materials shared in a course must be a legal copy of the work.
• Consider whether the copy harms the market or sale of the copyrighted material.
• Always, always, always include citations to the original source of publication.

Instructional Designers and Librarians are happy to work with faculty in a variety of ways, either in person or virtually. Simply schedule an appointment using our Microsoft Bookings site for one of the following services:

• Brightspace Support
• ExamSoft Support
• Faculty Library Research Session
• Instructional Design/Course Planning
• Library Orientation
• Panopto Support
• Preliminary Library Instruction Discussion
• Respondus Support
• TurnItIn Support
• Video & Multimedia Services Consultation

We can also be reached by email at ctrl@carlow.edu or gracelibrary@carlow.edu.