In March the ACRL published a new White Paper on Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment which looks at the ways in which the dramatic changes taking place in the environment for scholarly communication have necessary consequences for nearly all librarians, and especially those who [...]
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I am generally a poor speller, but even I understand that there are two Os in MOOC. So for added clarity, let me state up front that this post will focus on the first O — the one that stands for “open.” But I want to get to the discussion about that O in a [...]
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In the Supreme Court’s Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley decision, libraries caught a big break. But it was really no more than an affirmation of the status quo — libraries can still lend materials manufactured in other countries, students can still resell their textbooks regardless of where they were printed, and consumers and stores can sell [...]
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Last week I was attending a meeting on campus that had nothing to do with e-science (which today refers to virtually all science, I suppose) when a very fortuitous event occurred. Professor Jerome Reichman of the Duke Law School handed me a copy of the April 2012 issue of the Minnesota Law Review (vol. 96, [...]
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On Monday the Duke Libraries celebrated Open Access week with a talk by Jason Priem that was ostensibly about alternative metrics for measuring scholarly impact – so-called AltMetrics. Jason is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina School of Library and Information Science, a co-author of the well-regarded AltMetrics Manifesto, and one [...]
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It is not a case that draws much attention from higher education circles, but the case of WNET et al. v Aereo has drawn an amicus brief that should worry anyone who is interested in how copyright law serves or inhibits innovation and competition. What is most disturbing is that the gross misunderstanding of [...]
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When The Chronicle of Higher Education published its “Cautionary Tale” about a dissertation discovered, by its author, to be available for sale on Amazon.com without his knowledge, it was bound to stir up another round of anxiety over how dissertations are distributed in a digital world.
In the particular case, the problem was that [...]
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Ever since the University of Missouri announced on May 24 that it would end its subsidy of the University of Missouri Press, which seems to indicate its imminent closure, it has been interesting to listen to the reactions. As Jennifer Howard says in her piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the response [...]
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During a recent visit to another university, I got into an interesting discussion with students about the difference, if there is one, between derivative works, the exclusive rights in which are reserved to copyright holders, and transformative fair uses. The latter, of course, are considered “not infringement.” The class of graphic arts students that attended [...]
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As Duke University’s first Scholarly Communications Officer, Kevin Smith’s principal role is to teach and advise faculty, administrators and students about copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing. 
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