Toronto Metropolitan University Libraries » Articles by: Ann

Fair Dealing Week Event: Copyright Update 2020

Posted on February 20, 2020 by Ann

The week of February 24th is Fair Use/ Fair Dealing Week – an annual event to highlight, celebrate and educate about fair use in the United States and fair dealing in Canada and other jurisdictions. As part of our celebration of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, the Library is hosting a panel discussion, Copyright, and Education: 2020 Update

At this panel presentation, the speakers will review significant legal developments in the areas of fair dealing and copyright, which impact on the educational use of copyright materials. This includes the ruling in the Access Copyright v. York University case, as well as an update on the federal government’s review of the Copyright Act, and recent decisions by the Copyright Board impacting higher education. These developments will be of interest to instructors, faculty, and librarians, and others looking to ensure legal compliance with copyrighted materials in the classroom. Participants will also learn about the available supports at the Library to ensure copyright compliance, including the Library’s E-Reserves service.

Date: Monday, Feb. 24th, 2020

Location: SLC508

Time: 2:00-3:00pm

Speakers:

Julia Shin Doi, General Counsel General Counsel and Secretary of the Board of Governors

Carol Shepstone, Chief Librarian

Ann Ludbrook, Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian

Register: https://forms.gle/dyFbPpEXqPS9yDQv7

Open Access Week Events Oct. 21-27, 2019

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Ann

Open Access Week is a global event held annually in October to raise awareness of the benefits of Open Access in the academic community. Open access materials are academic materials distributed online legally and free of cost. This year’s theme is Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge – a prompt for the academic community to consider the benefits of open access, which include increased access to knowledge in our own communities and around the world. Ryerson Library is hosting several Open Access Week events in the week Oct. 21-27. We encourage faculty and graduate students to attend open access events and learn more about how open access can benefit your teaching and research.

Open Access Week Keynote and Award

Day: Oct 21, 2019

Time: 12 p.m.- 2 p.m.

Location: Library Collaboratory, 3rd Floor (access via 3rd Floor, LIB/SLC)

Keynote – Open Access and Inclusive Infrastructure in Support of Epistemic Diversity and Knowledge Equity

Keynote Speaker: Leslie Chan, University of Toronto, Scarborough

Leslie’s talk will focus on why we need to think beyond Open Access and the common debates about business models and licensing options. As commercial interests have increasingly been monopolizing the essential infrastructure of knowledge production and distribution, this will have the effect of further narrowing the ways we think about the research processes, dissemination, and evaluation of impact. The implications for the reduction of intellectual diversity and means of knowledge representations will be discussed.

Leslie Chan Biography:
Leslie Chan is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Critical Development Studies, University of Toronto, Scarborough, where he is crossed appointed to the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media. His teaching and professional practices center on the role of “openness” in the design of inclusive knowledge infrastructure, and the implications for the production and flow of knowledge, and their impact on local and international development. An original signatory of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, Leslie has been active in the experimentation and implementation of scholarly communication initiatives of varying scales around the world. He has served as Director of Bioline International, an international collaborative open access platform since 2000. Leslie was the principal investigator for the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet), funded by IDRC in Canada and DFID in the UK, and the PI of the Knowledge G.A.P project. He serves on the advisory board of the Directory of Open Access Journal, and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Recently he became a member of an international working group on Investing in Open Infrastructure. He has published broadly on open access, open science, and scholarly communications.

Award – 2019 Ryerson Library Open Access Wall of Fame

Dr. Jennifer L. Lapum

Dr. Jennifer Lapum is a Professor in the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. She is a leader and social justice advocate in the development and curricular integration of Open Educational Resources (OER) in post-secondary education. She has been a lead author and editor in the production of several e-textbooks that have involved creating original content combined with adapting and remixing existing OER. These resources have included topics related to health assessment, vital sign measurement, scholarly writing, nutrition, nurse-client interviewing, and immunizations. In addition to reducing textbook costs for students, Dr. Lapum’s passion is to promote learner engagement and create accessible learning spaces by leveraging the multi-media and interactive elements of book authoring software programs. The collaborative nature of OER production has been a cornerstone of her work in which she has valued the joint efforts of students, educators, instructional designers, librarians, artists, among others.

Publish Open Access without Paying Fees & Distinguish Yourself with an ORCID ID

Date: Oct 21, 2019

Time: 2 p.m.- 3 p.m

Location: Ryerson Library Collaboratory (access via 3rd Floor, LIB/SLC)

Do you want to publish your scholarly work and make it openly discoverable on the Internet, AND also comply with your publisher agreement? The Library will show you how to “publish green” open access versions of your scholarly articles without having to pay extra fees. Using SHERPA/Romeo and the Library Digital Repository you can learn how to make your article available even if you have already signed a publisher agreement. In this workshop you will also learn how to set-up, use and populate an ORCID account. In order for scholarly work to be found in a global network of researchers, it is essential to easily differentiate authors. Many journal publishers and funding agencies now require or encourage authors to apply with an ORCID ID. In fact over 80 publishers now require an ORCID ID to submit papers, including IEEE, Sage, and Wiley.

Register for these Events

Film Screening: Paywall – The Business of Scholarship

Date: Oct 22, 2019

Time: 11 a.m.- 12:30 p.m

Location: Ryerson Library Collaboratory (access via 3rd Floor, LIB/SLC)

As part of Open Access Week, the Library will be screening Paywall: The Business of Scholarship. This documentary, which focuses on the need for open access to research and science, questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers. There will be popcorn! This is a drop in event open to the Ryerson community.

Engage Students with Social Annotation

Date: Oct 22, 2019

Time: 3 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Location: Ryerson Library Collaboratory (access via 3rd Floor, LIB/SLC)

Join the teams from the Centre for Excellence in Learning & Teaching and the Ryerson Library for a hands-on workshop on teaching with social annotation, a new way to engage students with their readings. Recent research has shown that social annotation, which allows students to leave comments, questions, and reflections in the virtual margins of digital texts, as well as interact with each other, builds community and improves students’ reading comprehension, motivation, and critical thinking.

You will learn how to use Hypothes.is, an open and free web annotation tool. Hypothes.is allows you and your students to collaboratively annotate websites and course readings. Hypothes.is can also be used for your own scholarly, research, and creative work.

Hypothes.is is one of many open pedagogy tools available for your teaching needs.

Register for these Events

2018/19 Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives OER Grants

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Ann

The Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives (RULA) is pleased to announce its 2018/19 RULA Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants to encourage the creation and adoption of open educational resources. OER are learning materials that are openly licensed such that they are freely available to be adapted, copied, and shared. OER can be: courses, modules, textbooks, multimedia, assessments, and supplementary materials.

These grants advance the University’s priorities to foster an innovation ecosystem and ensure excellence in student learning experiences, and build on RULA’s digital initiatives, expertise in Open Access and Open Education Resource publishing and dissemination, and academic priorities of access and openness. The Library and Archives is very pleased to collaborate with the Office of eLearning and the Learning and Teaching Office in the review and adjudication of the grants, and in the support of successful projects. A total of $35,000 is available in two categories of grants:

Category 1 – Creation or Adaptation

3 grants for creation or adaptation of an OER textbook or ancillary materials and its subsequent use in class- $10,000 each.

Category 2 – Review and Adoption

5 grants for peer review and adoption of OER, or creation of small-scale supplementary/ ancillary material for an existing OER – $1,000 each.

Objectives of the Grant Program

To support faculty members in the review, revision and adoption of open textbooks and other OER materials
To increase the use of open educational content, textbooks and OER at Toronto Metropolitan University resulting in pedagogical innovation, enhanced access for students, and reduced textbook and class material costs.

Eligibility

All TFA and CUPE Faculty members, Librarians and Post-Doctoral fellows, may apply for these grants.

Evaluation Criteria

Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

Curation and customization of OER that will be freely and openly shared within Toronto Metropolitan University and beyond
Impact on student experience, including high-quality materials, maximum access, open and innovative pedagogy, and cost savings to students
Active engagement of students with Faculty in the adaptation/adoption of OER
Improve discipline/subject OER coverage
Complete and viable budget and project outcomes, consistent with project objectives and appropriate administrative approval from your Chair or supervisor as necessary
Foster commitment to building equity, community and inclusion, advance the TRC Calls to Action, and alignment with Ryerson’s Academic Plan and priorities

Guidelines for Applicants

Complete the Application Form by 4:00 pm on September 28, 2018. Proposals must be submitted via this link prior to the deadline.
Selection Process: Proposals will be evaluated according to an established assessment rubric based on the criteria noted above. A RULA OER Grant Review Committee comprising representation from the Library and Archives (chair), the eLearning Office, and the Learning and Teaching Office will consider all applications. The results of this process will be communicated to each applicant in late October, and announced during Open Access Week 2018.
Funds will be available once a detailed budget is approved by the RULA OER Grant Review Committee.
- Funds may be used to be used to pay students; editors; graphic designers; videographers, with preference given to projects that employ Ryerson students. Funds cannot be used to purchase equipment or used for travel costs.
- This is not an equipment fund, however, if the substance of the project requires equipment, that component may be considered if it is demonstrated that such equipment is unavailable on campus and is instrumental to the project on a case-by-case approved basis.
- Faculty teaching release is not funded by this grant.
- Funds will be made available no later than November 30th, 2018 after recipients attend an introductory 2-hour on-boarding session. Category 1 funds must be expended no later than August 31st, 2019, and Category 2 funds must be expended no later than April 15th, 2019.
- Brief final reports at project completion and/or close of the granting period are required, including an outline of fund expenditures. Any unspent funds will be returned to the Library and Archives.

Reporting and Deliverables

For Category 1 – Creation and Adaptation grants:
A mid-term report is due April 15, 2019, and final reports and links to materials created must be submitted to the Library OER Grant Committee by August 31, 2019. Upon completion of the project, a presentation must be made during Open Access Week (October 2019).

For Category 2 – Review and Adoption grants:

Final two-page report and links to materials created must be submitted to the Library OER Grant Committee by April 15, 2019. Upon completion of the project, a short presentation must be made during Open Access Week (October 2019).

Acknowledgment and Licensing

Grant recipients are required to credit the RULA Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants in any publications, conference proceedings, or media appearances resulting from the funded project.

All materials created via these funds must be licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY license, or a CC-BY-NC license and indicate that they were funded by a RULA Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants.

Assessment

Groups will be interviewed at end of project for feedback and a follow-up interview will be done after in-classroom pilots.

Application Process

To apply for a grant, please submit a completed application form to RULA by 4 pm September 28, 2018. Grant recipients will be announced October 22nd, 2018. If you have questions, please feel free to contact either Ann Ludbrook aludbrook@torontomu.ca ext. 6910, or Sally Wilson swilson@torontomu.ca ext. 556898, or email librarygrants@torontomu.ca.

April 26th is World Intellectual Property Day

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Ann

April 26th is World Intellectual Property Day and is celebrated around the world. Launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 the day was created to raise awareness about how intellectual property like patents, trademarks and copyright are both used and in turn foster creativity. This year’s theme is Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined.

Universities are both creators of intellectual property through faculty, instructor, researcher and student output, but are also consumers of intellectual property. Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives spends millions of dollars per year on book and digital journal subscription purchasing. Most of these on-line journal articles are not publicly available to those outside of a university environment without a fee. At universities we are digitally privileged because we pay a substantial amount yearly for access to this content.

The purchases universities make support publishers and at the same time give instructors, researchers and students timely access to the latest scholarly information that can be used in their courses and for their research. Ryerson researchers are also part of the creative cycle as they create and publish new works citing the work that has gone before them.

More about:
World Intellectual Property Day
WIPO

Open Access Textbooks: Open Education Week 2016

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Ann

A Guest Blog By Michelle Schwartz of the LTO for Open Education Week 2016

In February, Ryerson was excited to host Rajiv Jhangiani, a faculty member from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, for a talk on his research into the use of open textbooks to teach psychology. Open textbooks are defined as textbooks to which the copyright holder has assigned an open license, which allows anyone the right to access, reformat, and customize the textbook to best meet their needs. These textbooks can be downloaded or printed in hard copy for a small cost via print-on-demand. The author, rather than a publishing company, retains the copyright, and the textbooks are often peer reviewed.

Dr. Jhangiani is the author of two open textbooks hosted by the BC Open Textbook Project. The Open Textbook Project is an initiative by the government of British Columbia to make education more accessible. By developing open access textbooks for the subject areas with the highest enrollments in the province, British Columbia hoped to reduce the financial burden on students. The project has grown steadily over the course of the last few years, and as of March 2016, could boast of the following statistics:

Number of BC Open Textbooks: 139
Number of students using open textbooks: 12,159
Number of faculty adopting open textbooks: 110
Number of institutions adopting open textbooks: 26 (21 Public, 5 Private)
Student savings: $1,215,900 – $1,540,680

As an example of an open textbook, Dr. Jhangiani’s Research Methods in Psychology is in its 2nd Canadian edition. It can be downloaded for free in a multitude of formats, from PDF to epub, and it can be printed on demand for a small fee – $10.90 for black and white, or $32.25 for a colour version. As a comparison, a textbook on the same topic from a major publishing company is currently retailing on Amazon.ca for $276.

Though the importance of this cost difference to students cannot be understated, perhaps an even greater benefit of open textbooks was brought up by Dr. Jhangiani at his talk – by publishing with an open license, Dr. Jhangiani felt he had much more latitude to provide unique Canadian examples that he thought would be most beneficial to his students, without the pressure from a publishing company to try to address larger markets. Because the textbook is published with an open license, any educator can take the textbook, use the chapters that they like best, and replace Dr. Jhangiani’s examples and case studies with the material that is most relevant to their course. This flexibility is the strength of the open textbook model!

If you are interested in adopting an open textbook in your course, check out the offerings available at BC Campus, Open Stax College from Rice University, and the Open Textbook Library from the University of Minnesota.

If you have questions about adopting an open textbook or you have thoughts on how you might like to use them in your course, contact us at the LTO, michelle.schwartz@ryerson.ca, ext. 2094.

The Ryerson Library and Archives can also assist in finding open access educational resources to use in your teaching – please contact your Subject Librarian , call Ann Ludbrook at ext. 6910 aludbrook@ryerson.ca or have a look at the Ryerson Library Open Access Educational Resources Guide.

Happy Open Education Resources Week March 7th-March 11th!

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Ann

What are Open Education Resources (OER)?

OERs are educational works created by other instructors like lectures, tests, syllabus, assignments, textbooks, journal articles, case studies etc. that the author decides they want to let other educators use freely in their teaching. OERs can be used and reused freely for educational purposes because the author has freely released the work to the public for that use – usually using one of the six types of a Creative Commons licence. These licences allow different levels of use – some allow adaptation and even commercial use and some do not. All Creative Commons licences require citation. The best OER resources are governed by a principle of “The 5 Rs”.

“The 5 Rs” – in order for a resource to qualify as an OER users should be able to

• Reuse – use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)

• Revise – adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)

• Remix – combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

• Redistribute – share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

• Retain – make, own, and control copies of the content

(The 5rs is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221.)

In Canada there are some leaders of Open Educational Resources paving the way to support instructors who want to use resources like these that are free of copyright restrictions. One of these is the BCcampusOpenED resource that hosts Open Access textbooks, including peer-reviewed Canadian editions, and has had adoptions of these textbooks by more than 26 Canadian institutions, saving students over a million dollars of textbooks cost to date. In Ontario eCampus Ontario hosts Open Access educational resources and guides you to other open materials. Toronto Metropolitan University Open Learning has Open Access modules created by Ryerson instructors such as videos from The Naked Entrepreneur and a module Therapeutic Communication and Mental Health Assessment. Michelle Schwartz at The Learning and Teaching Office has created a great best practices resource for faculty and instructors who want to explore open access educational resources called The Open Access Classroom. Open Access Education resources are free for you to use and reuse and adapt to fit your teaching aims as long as you cite the source. Perhaps most importantly these resources are free of copyright restrictions and you can provide them to your students free of charge.

Celebrate Fair Dealing Week – Celebrate User’s Rights

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Ann

What would happen if everytime you wanted to use an image in an school assignment, instead of just crediting it – you had to write to the photographer for permission to use it? Or your instructor wanted to use that same image in a preszentation but they needed to wait to hear back from a publisher for permission before they could post it to D2L – and your test is Friday? What would happen if you wanted to photocopy a single chapter of a Library Reserve book to read at home – but first you needed the formal ok of the author? What about if you were working on a research assignment with a classmate and wanted to send a single article you scanned from a journal to them so they could read it too – but couldn’t because it would be considered copyright infringement. What if your professor could never upload anything ever for you to read to your class no matter if it is a just a few pages and important for your educational studies without it being against the law?

Luckily in Canada we have something called fair dealing, a copyright exception that gives you a user’s right to make and use short excepts of copyrighted materials for certain purposes such as education, private study, research and criticism and review – activities you do everyday as a student. If that copyright exception – fair dealing – was not in Canadian laws and in the Copyright Act – that material would be unavailable for you to copy without a licence – which could limit your access to material that contain knowledge you need to learn. Much of what students and educators do on a daily basis would be really really hard without fair dealing.

Fair dealing is really important because it allows a freer flow of information to happen in an educational setting – it promotes learning and scholarship. Creator’s rights (an authors or publishers right to be compensated for the use of a work) is in balance with your right to use a short excerpt of a work without having to get the permission every time you use copyrighted material in your school work. So celebrate Fair Dealing – it is a user’s right that Canadians should use, not lose.

Open Education Week March 9-13th, 2015

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Ann

This week is Open Education Week!

What is Open Education? It is an educational movement that is committed to producing teaching resources that can be used and then reused by other educators without formally seeking permission. In this model creators of educational content freely release their materials to the public. Other educators can then deliver the material freely to their students, as long as they attribute the original creator. These resources are most commonly made available under Creative Commons licences. Many MOOCs, open courses, and regular classes now routinely use this kind of content, because there is no need to get copyright clearance and they can be publicly posted on the web.

Open textbooks, like open courses, are created by experts and then made freely available to the public. Projects like the BCCampus OpenEd textbook initiative and the OER Commons give instructors a way to find free-to-share material, and great resources like the Creative Commons search can help anyone find free to use images and music.

Toronto Metropolitan University Library & Archives is hosting a few events this week to celebrate Open Education Week 2015.

Tips for Finding Free Music, Images, and More: Drop-In

Today 12-1 pm, March 9th, Student Learning Centre (SLC) Rm 515

Find free music & images and more to use in your projects – both commercial and school based. This is a drop-in session.

Is there a Free Textbook in Your Future?

12-1 pm, March 10th, 2015, Student Learning Centre (SLC) Rm 514

Can you imagine a world were some of the textbooks that are used to teach courses you take are free? Find out more about the Open Access Textbook movement.

The Affordable Classroom: Open Access Textbooks (LTO and the Library)

12-2pm March 12th, 2015 POD-372

Do you ever worry about the rising cost of textbooks for your students? Are you interested in hearing about possible alternatives to the traditional textbook model, like open access textbooks? In this workshop you will learn about new Canadian-lead open access textbook repositories, and other open access textbook resources that are freely available on the web to use in your teaching. If you are interested in building your own open access textbook to use in your classroom, this workshop will provide you with the necessary building blocks to get started.

The Copyright Modernization Act is now in Force

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Ann

Bill C-11 (The Copyright Modernization Act) Update

Many sections of Bill C-11 (The Copyright Modernization Act) including fair dealing exceptions for education and other educational and library specific provisions are now in force as of Nov. 7th, 2012. Toronto Metropolitan University is currently working on a new fair dealing policy, and our copyright pages wil be soon updated to reflect all the changes.

Highlights:

Fair dealing for the purpose of education, and parody and satire are now exceptions
Public performance rights are no longer needed to show a movie or video in a classroom setting
Material from the internet that does not have clearly posted warnings against reuse can be reused in course materials

Copyright Update on Fair Dealing and Bill C-11

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Ann

Supreme Court of Canada’s Decisions on Fair Dealing

Several Supreme Court of Canada rulings on copyright were made on July 12, 2012. These decisions should broaden the interpretation of the Copyright Act fair dealing provisions for materials copied for use in university teaching. Presently the AUCC is working on updating their fair dealing guidelines based on the recent Supreme Court of Canada’s rulings and in light of the new Copyright Modernization Act. When these new guidelines are released, the Toronto Metropolitan University Fair Dealing Policy will be updated to reflect this advice.

At present the current Toronto Metropolitan University Fair Dealing Policy is still in effect, dated August 31^st, 2011. Please use this document to make fair dealing assessments for your Fall 2012 courses. Once Toronto Metropolitan University’s policy is updated the library will offer several short informational sessions regarding the new fair dealing guidelines. Please check here to see the schedules for upcoming Copyright information sessions.

Bill C-11 (The Copyright Modernization Act)

While Bill C-11 (The Copyright Modernization Act) received Royal Assent on June 29, 2012 an order-in-council decision must be issued before it is in force. The current Copyright Act is still in effect until that time. Please use the current FAQ’s for use of course materials in the Physical Classroom and Virtual Classroom environment. These FAQ’s will be updated once The Copyright Modernization Act is in effect.