Month: July 2014

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Scholarly Communications Librarian @ CUNY: More Time to Apply!

Application Deadline Extended: There’s still time to apply to be CUNY’s first Scholarly Communications Librarian! The deadline is now Monday, July 28, 2014.

Summary of Posting:

The City University of New York (CUNY) seeks a Scholarly Communications Librarian to provide leadership for scholarly communication and digitization initiatives. The Scholarly Communications Librarian will be responsible for developing and managing CUNY’s new Digital Commons institutional repository of scholarly and creative works, publications, and digital objects by members of the CUNY community.

The Scholarly Communications Librarian will be hired at the Higher Education Associate rank and work for CUNY’s central Office of Library Services (OLS), not a specific campus. S/he will report to the University Director of Library Systems.

The Scholarly Communications Librarian will:

  • Organize, oversee, and assess the processes (e.g., faculty outreach, copyright compliance) related to the repository’s maintenance and development.
  • Collaborate with the vendor and CUNY-wide libraries to create, develop, and optimize publishing/ingest workflows.
  • Establish/codify best practices in repository management, including reporting and optimizing metadata management.
  • Establish communication procedures and platforms for campuses to use to work with contributing authors (faculty, staff, students, alumni).
  • Lead education and outreach to faculty and provide guidance to library colleagues and others on issues relevant to the dynamic scholarly publishing landscape, including author rights, open access (OA) publishing, and alternative publishing trends related to tenure and promotion.
  • Serve as OLS’s primary resource on copyright compliance, fair use, and other copyright issues pertinent to CUNY library collections and services.
  • Provide supervision for planning and implementing digitization projects in alignment with the library’s mission and strategic goals.
  • Collaborate with liaison librarians to provide tools and educational opportunities in the adoption of best practices in scholarly communication relevant to CUNY’s academic mission.

This position is represented by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) and covered by its contract. For more information, see http://psc-cuny.org/our-contracts.

Full Job Posting / How to Apply:

For the full job description, including minimum and preferred qualifications, application instructions, and a link to begin an application, visit http://tinyurl.com/CUNYScholComm

(The full address for the link is: https://home.cunyfirst.cuny.edu/psp/cnyepprd/
GUEST/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_JOB_DTL&Action=A&
JobOpeningId=10829&SiteId=1&PostingSeq=1. Alternatively, go to http://www.cuny.edu, click “Employment” then “Search Job Postings” and then “More Options to Search For CUNY Jobs,” and search for Job Opening ID 10829.)

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Creating an OER? How to Use Stuff that You Don’t Own

In May, Jill Cirasella, addressed the makers out there with her post, “Creating an OER? How Should You License It?” But before you license your OER, you have to build it. To do so, you will likely need to use another creator’s materials. Can you use extant materials, or does copyright always get in your way?

Consider this: if you plan to share your course widely as an OER, you can no longer count on a jointly-held library affiliation. Therefore, it is important to carefully vet the material you chose to include in your course for any potential copyright violations. It is also best to make sure that the materials you use are available publicly.

We have some tips that should protect you, while keeping your creative vision intact.

Creative Commons

We’ve posted several times about Creative Commons (CC) licenses for content creators (Jill’s post) and (Creative Commons 4.0 for Education).  These licenses help the content user/re-mixer as well. To use them, first consider how you plan to use the materials? Will you display an image, for example, or create derivatives of it? With use in mind, you can search for objects with the appropriate CC license. On Google Images, for example, you can search by license type (select appropriate Usage Rights from the Advanced Search page).  Even better, Creative Commons offers a consolidated search at search.creativecommons.org; participating sites offer audio, video and image files.  When using others’ materials, attribution is always the name of the game, so be sure to give credit where credit is due.

Open Access

If you need readings for your OER, consider open access (OA) publications. You can find them at the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or OpenDOAR, a directory of open access repositories. Because these materials are OA, they can be used by faculty or students regardless of library affiliation. What’s more, you needn’t post the objects themselves in your OER; it is often sufficient to link to them.

Fair Use

You can also make use of the doctrine of Fair Use. Fair Use is an exception to copyright law that protects the rights of content consumers within certain parameters. As the consumer/re-user, it is up to you to carefully analyze your use of the material, in order to determine if it is Fair Use. While there is no magic formula for this analysis, we recommend this step-by-step worksheet from the University of Minnesota. Here too, attribution is a must.

Are you are planning to create your own OER? Consider this opportunity.

For more copyright resources, see the (C)opyright at CUNY page.