COLLECTING MY THOUGHTS
Spotlight Optional
[Librarian alone on stage].
Librarian: Let us look around for openly-licensed materials to help us create a CC resource to show to the college. Get them really excited about it. What type of resource shall it be? A collection? An adaptation?
Well, let's first consider the case where I’m putting together a collection of other people’s openly-licensed works. Maybe I want to create an anthology of poetry for a lit class. Some of the poems may be licensed CC-BY, others CC-BY-SA, maybe even a CC-BY-NC (which would be fine as long as I'm not planning on selling the anthology). In any case, I can't change the licenses of the works I didn't write. As individual works they retain their individual licenses and even though they may have different licenses, they can still live side by side with each other in my collection. Obviously I'll need to include the original CC licenses for each individual work, which will make it easier for later (or what we call "downstream") users to know what they can and can't do with those original works. And as I haven't adapted any of the individual works, I'm not required to match my anthology's license with those of the pieces it contains. I can then license my own contribution to the anthology, such as the introduction to the collection, commentary, etc. as I see fit. That seems pretty straight forward.
[Pauses and tents fingers]
Librarian: However, now let’s say I want to create an adaptation (also sometimes known as a derivative) of someone else’s work. But what is an adaptation? It can take the form of a translation, a film made from the work in question, or a flat out modification.
[Turns to the audience]
Librarian: Perhaps in this case I’m creating an Open Educational Resource (or "OER" if you will) for a class. And while looking around I've found a good open-licensed article that I'd like to use. Maybe it doesn't quite concentrate on the point I'm trying to get across. It has too much material, which maybe good material, but is irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. Sometimes an instructor might want to customize an openly-licensed work to meet some specific student learning outcomes. So, license willing, I can make changes or edits to the found OER, take the parts I need, and incorporate the modifications into my own work. An adaptation! Yes.
[Untents fingers]
Librarian: If it is only one resource I want to adapt, no worries. Just match their license and “Bob’s your uncle”…(side note, I do have an Uncle Bob). However, what if I have multiple sources I am adapting (or in this case we can call it remixing) to make our OER. Well then, as usual, I need to make sure I am honoring all of their licenses. It can get a little confusing, but thankfully there is a useful chart from the Creative Commons folks…
[Rummages for large chart, or projects chart on a screen]
"CC License Compatibility Chart" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Librarian: …that can help us to figure it out. Look for the license of the first work on the column and then look for the license of the other on the row. Scan across to their coordinate cell. This chart will show us if they are compatible [makes check sign with fingers] with one another or not [makes X sign with fingers or arms]. Look at all the X’s associated with ND (NoDerivatives). Now technically speaking one can change the source material for oneself, but then you are unable to share it out. Another concern involves mixing NonCommercials (NCs) with ShareAlikes (SAs), which is technically allowed, but not recommended, as it can create more problems down the road for other adaptors trying to figure out their own license requirements. It also then follows that, due to its double limitations, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) can only be remixed with another of that same license. Tricky business, these adaptations. Just got to keep my head about me.
[Sighs]
Librarian: Okay, I think I’ve got most of the ideas down now about collections and adaptations. Perhaps what I should do now is create a basic small collection of openly-licensed materials to show the college how it might look, as an example. Let’s say I want to create a display of images of old books and papers, as a reminder of the good old days...well, the old days, atleast. I'll call it "Two Groups of Old Books & A Script"...
TWO GROUPS OF OLD BOOKS AND A SCRIPT
(Commentary: The script is in French.)
"Old books, Madrid, España, 2016 07" by Benjamín Núñez González is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
"Expo Louis de Funès à Paris - 36" by Shev123 is in the Public Domain, CC0
"TWO GROUPS OF OLD BOOKS AND A SCRIPT" by Philip Jensen, Tarrant County College is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Librarian: Now if that doesn’t peak their interests in creating CC resources, at the very least openly-licensed collections, I don’t know what else will.
[Confidently struts off stage.]
