Ball State University Libraries Host Statewide Resource Sharing Conference

On August 29, 2007, librarians from around the state met at Bracken Library to participate in Discovery to Delivery: Good to Great Resource Sharing in Indiana.

The conference, attended by 80 librarians, was jointly sponsored by the Indiana State Library, INCOLSA, the Academic Libraries of Indiana (ALI), and OCLC with Collette Mak, INCOLSA Director of Library Products, serving as the conference coordinator. Suzanne S. Rice, Ball State University Libraries’ Assistant Dean for Public Services, coordinated local arrangements.

Douglas F. Hasty, Professor, Head of Access Services Department, Florida International University was the keynote speaker. His address “Rethinking Customer Services” focused on applying Fourth Generation Management principles to library settings. James R. Corridan, associate director from the Indiana State Library, provided an update on resource sharing initiatives and gathered feedback from participants about recent changes in the library-to-library courier system.

Cathy DeRosa, vice president for the Americas and global vice president of marketing for OCLC, discussed issues of privacy and security related to online user behaviors and implications for resource sharing. Elizabeth McKinney de Garcia, PINES Program Manager, visited from Georgia to introduce their consortium that joins 46 Georgia public library systems.

Afternoon breakout sessions included sessions that focused on a range of topics designed to meet the interests of practitioners and administrators, including:

- Library experiences in changing to use new technologies – Cathy DeRosa, OCLC
- Overview of current automated delivery aids – Collette Mak, INCOLSA
- Issues in home delivery and distance education students – Suzanne S. Rice, Ball State University Libraries
- Implementing improvements in delivery – Robert V. Roethemeyer, Concordia Theological Seminary
- Delivery innovations – Suzanne Ward, Libraries of Purdue University

Survey responses indicated participants were highly satisfied with the day, and they expressed interest for more such gatherings in the future.

The Ball State University Libraries were pleased to host this conference and look forward to additional opportunities to serve as a gathering point for innovative discussions among library professionals.

To see a photo gallery from the Conference, click on www.bsu.edu/library/conference/resourcesharing/photos.
For more information, contact Suzanne S. Rice, Ball State University Libraries’ Assistant Dean for Public Services, SRice@bsu.edu, (765) 285-1305.

Bracken Library’s Study and Conference Rooms Offer Quality Space for Collaborative Study, Meetings

The Ball State University’s Bracken Library offers students, faculty, and Ball State Community Members a variety of comfortable study and conference rooms for collaborative study, learning, and small conferences. There are 17 rooms. Of these, 16 of them seat between 6 and 20 persons, and one room accommodates 90 persons. These small and large rooms must be reserved and are also available to staff and campus organizations for meetings, project discussions, colloquia, and planning.

The type of equipment available in each room depends upon the room itself. All of them offer wireless connectivity, and many offer projection screens, chalk boards, and bulletin boards. All of the rooms have tables and chairs and many of the rooms offer a computer monitor for laptop presentations. Visit www.bsu.edu/library/studyrooms to view an equipment inventory for each room and to see a photograph of the space.

Laptops, iBooks, digital projectors, pc microphones, digital cameras, media card readers, a SMART Board, and other equipment are also available for use in these rooms. Items can be checked out from the Libraries’ Educational Resources Collections (Bracken lower level) as aids for group and/or personal study.

Bracken Library’s hours are good, too, since we are open 120.5 hours a week, including until 3:00 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. With wireless connections throughout the library, students can get on-the-spot reference help using instant messenger clients such as AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. The Bookmark Café provides a great place to take a study break with a variety of snacks and beverages.

In the near future, Bracken Library’s study and conference rooms can be reserved online. While this module is being developed, students and faculty and members of the Ball State Community can reserve a room or ask questions through personnel at the Periodicals desk, in person or by phone, (765) 285-5146.

The Ball State University Libraries as Third Place after Home and Classroom

The library as place has been a frequent topic of discussion and scholarship over the past few years. As librarians continue to apply powerful information technologies and to integrate their print and digital collections, their new focus is to design library spaces that attract students who will perceive and use the library as the best place for learning after the classroom.

A discussion of library as place naturally progresses into a deeper inquiry about how people use libraries to solve their informational and research needs as well as how libraries meet our students’ social needs. In Nancy Kalikow Maxwell’s 2006 book, Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship, she writes that in this time of virtual community, humans need and long for a physical space to gather. In chapter seven, entitled, “Librarians and Libraries Promote Community,” she identifies and promotes libraries as a third place — a place after home and work, with the library as a place that allows people to be in the presence of others to gather informally. In the academic community, these places are the dormitory/home and classroom.

With these first and second places in mind, it is evident that the Ball State University Libraries are fast becoming recognized as the learner’s third place. The number of persons who visit the Ball State University Libraries daily, in all student segments from freshmen through graduate and including faculty, continues to increase. This traffic is measured by turnstile count and data analysis of visitors’ use of our computer workstations, public printing resources, and collection circulation. There are very good reasons why these increases are happening. In part, they are due to the positive experiences and association of our students and faculty as they engage academically and socially in our Libraries.

Our students report that they come to the University Libraries for help from librarians with research papers, to study individually or collaboratively with others, and to use the technologies and software applications that the Libraries make easily accessible. Students speak about the Libraries as a place to read and study, attend a variety of library-sponsored workshops and classes, engage in educational simulation software, or just to be here in the Libraries.

They also mention how they value the Libraries’ popular Bookmark Café as a place where they can grab a cup of coffee or tea, or talk with friends and colleagues. Students see the University Libraries as a place to develop their skills for scholarship and their soft skills that involve community, communication, and creativity. These and other reasons are tangible recognition of the Libraries’ important contribution to the academic community as a learning laboratory and an integral part of campus life.

Libraries, both academic and public, will continue to evolve, adapt, and improve the accessibility of their resources for research, learning, and classroom enhancement. Librarians and the library’s paraprofessional personnel will be found at the forefront of these exciting changes. They will work to expand their library’s collection access and develop new ways for their libraries to contribute to the intellectual pursuits of students and faculty. Libraries will continue to be characterized as providing a rich array of uniformly gracious and friendly services to all users.

In these ways, academic libraries, as a third place, will serve as an extension of the home and classroom, as a laboratory for research and learning, and as a gathering place for academic and social pursuits.

Meet the Authors: Banned Book Week Program to Feature Historic Censorship Event of Books on Trial with Shirley and Wayne Wiegand

In conjunction with Banned Book Week, the authors of Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland will present a program in the Alexander M. Bracken Library’s Forum Room on October 4 at 7:30 p.m.

Prior to the evening program at Bracken Library, there will be a Meet the Authors reception and book signing at Carnegie Library, 301 East Jackson Street, Muncie, Indiana from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Shirley A. Wiegand, Professor Emeritus of Law at Marquette University, will be the main speaker for the program. Her husband and co-author, Wayne A. Wiegand, F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies and Professor of American Studies at Florida State University, will also participate in the program. Although married for 42 years, this is the first time that the two have published together.

Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland tells the story of a raid on the Progressive Bookstore in Oklahoma City in 1940 when local officials seized thousands of books and pamphlets and arrested 20 customers and proprietors. All were detained incommunicado and many were held for months on high bail. Four were tried, convicted, and received 10-year sentences, setting off protests by labor unions, churches, publishers, academics, librarians, and prominent individuals like Woody Guthrie and Eleanor Roosevelt. As a result of the protests, the convictions were overturned on appeal.

The authors have written a compelling book about these events that is due to be published shortly before their program here. They will have copies for purchase and signing at the reception at Carnegie Library and at the evening presentation at Bracken Library.

The events are being sponsored by the Friends of the Alexander M. Bracken Library, the Ball State University Libraries, Muncie Public Library, and Ball State University’s departments of English, History, and Honors College, and the Center for Middletown Studies.

For more information or to join the Friends, contact John B. Straw, Executive Secretary for the Friends of the Alexander M. Bracken Library and Ball State University Libraries’ Director for Archives and Special Collections, JStraw@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

Oral Histories with Muncie Labor Leaders Available Online through the University Libraries’ Digital Media Repository

Students and scholars can now access oral history interviews that document the history of organized labor in Muncie, Indiana through the Ball State University Libraries’ Digital Media Repository. The Muncie Labor Oral History Project Collection includes 15 interviews with prominent labor leaders from the Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections’ Muncie Labor Archives.

Inspired by former Indiana state legislator and union leader Hurley Goodall, these interviews were conducted as part of the Center for Middletown Studies’ effort to document recent economic changes and the history of labor unions in Muncie. Participants from all the major unions in Muncie were interviewed by C. Warren Vander Hill between December 2005 and February 2006.

The digital collection consists of recordings, transcripts, and photographs. Representatives from major employers, such as Chevrolet-Muncie, the Ball Corporation, and the Borg Warner Corporation were interviewed. Topics discussed include union activities, the importance of unions in the lives of workers, and the future of unions.

The collection can be accessed in the Digital Media Repository, http://libx.bsu.edu/, under the “Middletown Digital Oral History Collections.”

For more information, contact Maren L. Read, Assistant Archivist for Manuscript Collections, Ball State University Libraries, MLRead@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

The University Libraries Contribute to Indiana’s Digital Memory

Indiana Memory is a collaborative project of Indiana libraries, museums, archives, and other related institutions to provide digital access to the state’s unique cultural and historical heritage. The development of this state-wide digital library by the Indiana State Library is intended to serve Indiana citizens, students, lifelong learners, scholars, researchers, state and federal government, businesses, and others.

Through the continuing growth of the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, http://libx.bsu.edu/, the University Libraries are well positioned to make a significant contribution to Indiana’s long-term digital memory. Many current collections provide digital windows into the lives, history, and culture of past and present residents of East Central Indiana. Several planned and anticipated future collections will also have an Indiana focus.

The two past Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant projects completed by the University Libraries had Indiana themes.

Created by the 2005-2006 LSTA grant, The Digital Repository of U.S. Civil War Resources from East Central Indiana, provides a rich source of handwritten letters, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and other research materials that document the involvement of Indiana soldiers and civilians during the War Between the States.

The recently completed 2006-2007 LSTA grant project focused on providing access to digital audio and transcripts of oral histories with African-American, Jewish, and Catholic citizens of Muncie, Indiana, in the Middletown Digital Oral History Collection.

The current LSTA grant project for 2007-2008 will provide access to another Indiana historical resource, The Muncie Post-Democrat newspaper. This anti-Ku Klux Klan paper from the 1920s through the 1950s is being digitized and will be accessible and searchable through the Digital Media Repository in mid-2008.

Other collections in the Digital Media Repository that preserve Indiana’s digital memory include:
· More than 5,000 historical photographs in the Middletown Digital Archives, including the Otto Sellers, W. A. Swift, Spurgeon-Greene, and Other Side of Middletown collections
· 380 issues of The Muncie Times, an African-American newspaper
· 568 photographs of Indiana courthouses in the Daniel W. Hartwig Collection
· 87 photographs of covered bridges in Indiana in the Alvin W. Holmes Collection
· 167 broadcasts of Indiana Public Radio’s Indiana ArtsDesk program dedicated to fostering awareness, appreciation, and participation in the arts in East Central Indiana
· 629 digital videos of NewsLink Indiana news briefs produced by Ball State University
· WIPB videos on Ed Ball’s Century and Gene Stratton Porter: Voice of the Limberlost
· Video, photographs, and other documentation of Robert F. Kennedy’s speech at Ball State University in 1968
· Video, photographs, and other documentation of The Man Haters, an historic 1915 silent movie filmed in Muncie, Indiana, featuring local residents in the cast

Additional Indiana-focused digital resources in the Digital Media Repository are slides of Indiana architecture in the Architecture Images Collection, Ball State campus photographs and building plans, and films by Ball State students.

As the Indiana Memory project moves forward, the digital collections being created by the Ball State University Libraries, especially through partnerships with other community, educational, cultural, and historical institutions, will provide a rich resource representing the lives, culture, history, and contributions of the citizens of East Central Indiana.

For more information on the Indiana Memory project, visit the State Library’s Web page at http://www.statelib.in.us/.
For more information about Ball State University Libraries’ Digital Media Repository, contact John B. Straw, JStraw@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

Ball State University Libraries Offer Laptop Computer Clinic for Incoming, Returning Students

For the third consecutive year, the University Libraries’ Library Information Technology Services (LITS) unit has offered new and returning students a Laptop Computer Clinic.

The clinic, housed in the main part of Bracken Library’s first floor, operated six hours each weekday for seven days between August 16 and August 24, during the library’s high traffic hours of 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The goals for the Laptop Computer Clinic were to:
· ensure students’ personal laptop computers can access the Ball State WiFi network
· assist with the download and installation of the Symantec AntiVirus program available free to all Ball State University students
· promote the information technology opportunities that are available through computer access for students by the University Libraries


The Laptop Computer Clinic was operated and staffed by LITS personnel, including student technicians, system administrators, and our web developers. It provided the Libraries’ technology personnel with an opportunity for direct interaction with incoming and returning students to ensure that their laptops could access the computer network. LITS personnel were able to learn first-hand about some of the technical hurdles and challenges that new students to the university face as they encounter the rich, advanced technology environment provided at Ball State University.

For more information, contact Bradley D. Faust, Ball State University Libraries’ Assistant Dean for Library Information Technology Services, BFaust@bsu.edu, (765) 285-8032.

Mozilla Firefox: The Internet Browser of Choice by Many Ball State University Libraries’ Personnel

Online searching and content retrieval is vital to modern academic library research, learning, and knowledge discovery. Two major internet browsers provide the primary gateway to the online search services from content providers to accomplish this work. These internet browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla FireFox. Many library staff prefer Mozilla FireFox, now in release 2.0, because it provides them with several powerful features and functions.

A powerful FireFox feature is tabbed navigation and it was enhanced in version 2.0. Many times staff want to have quick access to multiple web sites during the course of their work. Traditionally, this required multiple open browser windows. Tabbed navigation provides a convenient, efficient way to have easy access to multiple web pages.

Through FireFox’s integrated search feature, it is easy to add web search engines and change the default web search option in the Navigation Toolbar. For Example, I choose ZUULA as the default web search engine because it provides results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search sites. Some of the web search sites pre-loaded in FireFox are Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Answer.com, and Amazon. The Firefox Search Engine Manager simplifies modifying the integrated search bar.

FireFox is also preferred because of its performance and stability. Day in and day out, FireFox responds faster and runs more reliably than other browsers. Waiting on web pages to load can be frustrating, particularly for busy Libraries’ personnel who spend a considerable amount of time using the web. Slow page load delays mean lost productivity.

Another useful Firefox feature is the web feeds (RSS) reader via the FireFox Live Bookmarks function. It provides great control over feed subscriptions, incorporating the reader function directly in the browser. Web feeds are a great tool for keeping up-to-date on library news, program offerings, and other topics.

An additional significant FireFox feature that library personnel comment on is its add-on functionality. Thousands of add-ons, extensions and themes exist to personalize, customize, and configure how FireFox operates on your computer. Many of these add-ons, available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox, are valuable tools for library researchers.

The Mozilla FireFox browser is available for free download at www.mozilla.com/en-US/products.

The University Libraries include FireFox on all public workstations. The web log usage information reveals the FireFox internet browser is used every bit as often as Microsoft’s IE and other internet browsers.

In my column next month, I plan to write about some of FireFox’s library-friendly extensions, including LibX, del.icio.us, the University Libraries’ toolbar, Book Burro, and others. These internet browser extensions, or add-ons, expand FireFox functionality and usability and are valuable resources for libraries to share with researchers, students, and other learners.

New Archives and Special Collections Home Page Offers More Resources for Teaching, Learning, and Research

A new and improved home page for the Ball State University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections now provides more information and resources for students, faculty, and researchers. Archivists Philip J. Deloria and Maren L. Read developed the webpages.

New Features
The new home page includes many new features. Archives and Special Collections is now featuring an Ask an Archivist service similar to the Ask a Librarian service offered from the University Libraries home page. The home page features a button at the bottom of the page that links to information about how to ask an archivist a reference question by email, phone, or in person.
The home page also features a New and Notable banner to create awareness about current exhibits, news stories, and upcoming events. Currently it is featuring the Bernarr MacFadden Physical Culture Exhibit, the upcoming Digitizing Oral History Conference, the archives blog, and news stories featuring Archives and Special Collections.
The new Homepage also takes advantage of features like a rollover menu and images that rotate upon refresh. All images on the page, including those in the banner at the bottom of the screen, link directly to the Digital Media Repository collections from which they are drawn.

New Content
The new homepage links to new secondary pages presenting information grouped according to the following categories: About Us, Collection Areas, Digital Collections, Conducting Research, Services and Forms, and Donating Materials.
The Digital Collections page, the Conducting Research page, and the Instructional Sessions and Tours page offer new avenues for students and faculty to access information as well as new content to facilitate the reader’s interaction with the Archives and Special Collections in more meaningful ways.
A new Alumni Portal is under development. It will provide access to resources of particular interest to alumni wishing to revisit their days at Ball State.
Visit the new home page either directly at www.bsu.edu/libraries/archives/index.html or navigate to it from the University Libraries home page by clicking on the About button, then on the link to Archives and Special Collections in the Collections category. I invite your comments and suggestions.
For more information, contact Philip James Deloria, Assistant Archivist for Digital Projects and University Records, PJDeloria@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe CS3 and Other Updates to the Ball State University Libraries’ Public Access Computers

One of the University Libraries’ primary objectives is to provide our students and faculty with excellent technology to support their pursuit of academic success. In keeping with this goal, the University Libraries are home to over 350 public access computers (PACs), which we endeavor to keep updated with a wide variety of software applications used by students of all academic programs.

During the Summer Interim, several enhancements were made on more than 120 PACs on Bracken Library’s first floor. Among the most significant changes was the addition of Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium.

Included in Microsoft Office are the newest versions of Access, Excel, Grove, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word. To minimize compatibility issues and other customer concerns, Office 2003 applications are still available on all PACs.

Included in Adobe CS 3 are the newest versions of Acrobat Professional, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. As always, Ball State faculty and students are invited to recommend other software applications for addition to the University Libraries’ PAC repertoire.

Personnel in the Libraries’ Library Information Technology Services (LITS) unit have worked with several academic departments to offer many software applications. These include ADAM, ArcInfo Desktop/Workstation, AutoCAD, Mathematica, MiniTab, MultiFrame, Music Ace, Revit Building, SAP GUI, SPSS, among others. Thousands of students benefit daily from having on-demand access to these applications in University Libraries.

For a complete list of software and hardware available on equipment at the University Libraries, see “Customer Technology” of the LITS website, www.bsu.edu/library/lits.

For more information, contact Bradley D. Faust, Ball State University Libraries’ Assistant Dean for Library Information Technology Services, BFaust@bsu.edu,(765) 285-8032.

Librarian Liaisons Use Technology, Face-to-Face Communication to Share Information with Faculty

Librarian liaisons are creatively using technology to assist them in their efforts to encourage and facilitate communication between and among the University Libraries and academic departments. The 12 librarians in the program employ blogs, websites, online newsletters, Instant Messaging (IM), and email to communicate with faculty members in the 23 participating academic departments.

Since librarian Stacy B. Chaney-Blankenship began posting to her “Journalism Liaison Blog” in February 2006, her blog has received over 1,800 visits. Her posts to the blog are a mix of library news, information on journalism resources in the University Libraries, and the occasional news item on resources farther afield. “I use the blog as an opportunity to alert journalism faculty and staff to the Libraries’ resources and services that they can use in their research and in support of classroom activities,” Chaney says.

Science Librarian Kevin E. Brooks posts a similar mix of Libraries’ news and resources on his blog with a focus on topics in the sciences and health science. A recent planetarium program inspired Brooks to post an entry about stargazing to the blog and earned him the thanks of planetarium director Ronald H. Kaitchuck for helping to promote the planetarium.

Faculty members in the Department of English receive email newsletters from librarian Matthew C. Shaw several times over the course of the year. In addition to drawing attention to Libraries’ news, Shaw uses the newsletter to highlight information resources as they relate to a wide range of topics in literature and writing. Inspired by the work of the other liaisons, new liaison Erin S. Gabrielson has a newsletter in the works for the Department of Anthropology.

Instant messaging is another tool in the librarian liaisons’ kit. Librarian Stephen K. Duecker hosted IM sessions in Professor Kay E. Hodson-Carlton’s Nursing 605 class so that students could ask questions about library research. “The students were thrilled to find out about all the Libraries’ services available to them as distance education students,” says Duecker.

Librarian Jason A. Fields, liaison for Distance Education, has also found that online communication is essential for the program as a whole. Fields uses the Libraries’ website for distance education, a blog, and IM to stay in touch with both faculty and students in the program. “Promoting the University Libraries’ services to students and faculty becomes easier if you open up multiple points of access to them,” says Fields.

The librarian liaisons also value face-to-face communication with faculty by visiting them in their departments. The liaisons may attend departmental meetings to showcase new information services or they may stop by faculty offices to discuss a faculty member’s research needs.

Liaisons also make an effort to attend the events or lectures sponsored by a department. Librarian Brenda Yates Habich, for example, attended Women’s Studies Week events this past spring. “It was a positive experience for me,” she says, “to meet women across campus and to interact with them and to see students involved with the Women’s Studies programs.”

Public presentations are also useful for the librarian liaisons’ work. Librarian James A. Bradley interacts with many academic departments while promoting the Digital Media Repository (DMR). He has found public presentations that showcase the DMR are an effective way of demonstrating the repository’s capabilities and of meeting faculty who might be interested in contributing a collection.

Face-to-face communication between liaisons and faculty also takes place everyday in the University Libraries. Our librarians who work with subject collections frequently work with faculty members in the Libraries. In the Architecture Library, for example, I have found that chatting with faculty members who stop by the Library can easily lead to a purchase suggestion or an instruction session for a class.

Library instruction sessions for students offer another opportunity for librarian liaisons to work in academic partnership with faculty. Already this semester Librarian Diane E. Hill has worked with Professor Nancy J. Clevenger to prepare an instruction session for Clevenger’s course in Planning for the Elementary and Early Childhood Classroom.

Suzanne Rice, the acting Music Librarian, Assistant Dean of Public Services, has also been working with the College of Fine Arts’ School of Music to arrange instructional sessions. “Liaisons and teaching faculty can work together to develop workshops that introduce students to resources in their field,” says librarian Lisa J. Jarrell, liaison to Fisher Institute for Wellness & Gerontology and the Department of History. “The librarian-faculty relationship benefits the instructors’ teaching and student learning.”

Both in person and online, the librarian liaisons are available to share information, answer questions, and encourage feedback about the University Libraries.

For more information about the Libraries’ Librarian Liaison program, contact Arthur W. Hafner Ph.D., M.B.A., Dean of University Libraries, AHafner@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5277.

Distance Education and the Copyright Law

Did you realize that U.S. Federal Law can dramatically affect the way faculty teach? Well, it does, particularly in the distance education classroom!

The use of copyrighted materials in the distance education classroom is governed by the TEACH Act of 2002. TEACH is an acronym for Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization. The TEACH Act was signed into law by President Bush on November 2, 2002 and specifies how copyrighted materials can be legally used in transmitted courses, which includes courses distributed via Internet, satellite, and two-way video.

The TEACH Act provides challenges for both faculty and students in the distance education classroom environment. Even so, it provides a remedy to many of the inconsistencies in the 1978 Copyright Law, which was not distance-education-friendly. The Teach Act uses a unique, education model concocted by the U.S. Congress.

This educative model in TEACH is known as a mediated instructional activity (MIA). The MIA means a couple of things. Firstly, it means that an instructor should be present in the accredited distance education environment. Secondly, the MIA limits the types of copyrighted materials used in distance education to the same kinds of materials a face-to-face lecture would use in a face-to-face class. MIA allows, for example, this scenario: If you use a four-minute clip from the 1942 movie Casablanca in your face-to-face History 210 classroom, that same clip transfers over to your distance education course and you do not need any kind of permission from the copyright owner. Of course, you can use less time. However, you cannot use more and still comply with the MIA requirement of the TEACH Act.

Whatever media an instructor would display or perform during a face-to-face course can be lawfully and legally used in a distance education course. There are, of course, some caveats. Besides owning the necessary legitimate copy of the work, there are four basic requirements:
The performance or display must be related to the teaching content
The performance or display must be technologically limited to enrolled students
The audio/visual transmission must be encrypted and/or password protected
You cannot retain copies past the class session


In summary, the TEACH Act in digital transmissions:
Only covers in-class performances, with the provisos mentioned above
Only covers in-class displays, with the provisos mentioned above
And for any other distance education activity, for example, supplementary materials such as articles, fair use will probably need to be relied on. Failing fair use, permission and/or licensing will need to be obtained for transmitting the copyrighted material.


The sum and substance of this is that what an instructor can do in a face-to-face classroom is not the same for the distance education instructor. The distance education instructor must comply with the TEACH Act’s MIA requirements for a transmitted, distance education course.

In order to comply with the TEACH Act stipulations, and for the convenience of faculty, the University Libraries provide an online form to help faculty comply with the TEACH Act. Click on the link below.*

The information submitted on his form will be used to make an analysis for the "mediated instructional activities" exemption as defined by the TEACH Act.

The Copyright Office realizes that the TEACH Act can be complicated. To assist our distance education faculty, the University Libraries have a page dedicated exclusively to the needs of distance education faculty, www.bsu.edu/library/collections/distanceed/faculty.
This article is the fifth and last in a series of articles on Intellectual Property Issues in Higher Education. For additional information or to have any of your questions answered, please contact Dr. Fritz Dolak, The University Libraries’ Copyright and Intellectual Property Office, FDolak@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5330.

A Technique and Low-cost Way for Global Access to Your Library's Digital Assets (Part 2)

htkauwkeIn the June 2007 Library Insider newsletter, I wrote about how using Google Sitemap can improve web crawling and search results for a library’s digital repository, www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/libinsider/libinsiderv5i6.pdf.
In this issue, I will further describe the use of techniques using Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, OAI-PMH, to increase or improve the availability of digital content to search engine users. I will also discuss how to use your CONTENTdm OAI server with Google Sitemaps.

CONTENTdm has included OAI support since its version 3 or earlier. The Ball State University Libraries have been advantageously using this functionality for over a year, and we have seen how it improves and expands hits and usage of our digital collections. For those who are not familiar with this protocol, I will write a brief explanation about OAI-PMH.

Simply stated, OAI-PMH is a protocol used to collect metadata in XML format from various systems with the intention to index the metadata in a centralized location.

There are two main players in this process. They are the Data Providers and the Service Providers. Data Providers are institutions with systems that have shareable metadata or content. These institutions may already have a searching ability to search their contents. Even if they do, searching can only be done within the data provider’s repository or interface. Service Providers are institutions that are able to gather content or data from different Data Providers in one place and provide service for the collected data, such as searching.

If you have digital collections, you already are one of the many Data Providers, and you probably also have collections that are unique to your institutions. The barrier to making these collections accessible globally is getting them known. Happily, OAI-PMH is one of the answers.

The first action is to register your institution as a Data Provider with the organization that started the whole idea, the Open Archives Initiative, www.openarchives.org/data/registerasprovider.html. If you are using CONTENTdm, then you can rest assured that it will pass the conformance test. Below are the general steps to follow to register a CONTENTdm system as a Data Provider:
Locate oai.txt. It is usually located under %CONTENTdm_Installation_folder%\server\conf\
Change the field elements as instructed in the file:
· Enable the OAI
· Name the repository
· Specify the email contact for the administrator
· Specify the collections’ alias you wish to make available through OAI, one line per collection, e.g. Collections/mycollection

The second step is to find as many Service Providers as possible who are willing to harvest your data, and find out how you can become a Data Provider for them. There is a list of Service Providers at www.openarchives.org/service/listproviders.html. This process usually does not cost anything. However, some service providers are only willing to harvest data that is of interest to them in particular subjects or disciplines.

Keep in mind that the central idea in following these steps is to make your collections searchable from multiple locations. In this respect, it is natural to think about Google when talking about web searching. So the next question to ask is how to get Google involved in harvesting your data. The good news is that Google supports OAI-PMH, www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34655.

However, the instructions on the website are not easy to understand, so let me provide some clarity.
In CONTENTdm, a file that acts as an OAI server is oai.exe. This file can usually be found under
%CONTENTdm_Installation_folder%\server\docs\cgi-bin\.

From the web, the OAI server will be accessed through http://yoursite.com/cgi-bin/oai.exe. If you are interested in using the Google Sitemap service, keep in mind that Google requires sitemap files to be placed in the highest level web directory, that is, http://yoursite.com/. This requires you to move the OAI.exe from \server\docs\cgi-bin\ directory to \server\docs\ directory.

An alternative to the first solution is to add a new site, http://yoursite.com/cgi-bin, to your sitemap account. By doing this the OAI server will be located in the highest level of web directory.

Unfortunately, if you can successfully add your OAI server as a sitemap, you are only half way done. Google stated that it will automatically add query parameters such as ?verb=Identify or ?verb=ListRecords to the server. However, based on our server log analysis, it added only the Identify parameter and never added the ListRecord parameter to its query during the first 4 months or longer of our implementation. This means our data was never actually collected by Google because, in order to collect data from an OAI data provider, Identify parameter is not enough. Service provider would need to query the Data Provider using additional parameters, technically referred to as verbs. Having learned this, we modified our approach for using the OAI server. Instead of submitting just the OAI server (oai.exe) to Google Sitemaps, we provide the whole query string for each collection that is required for a Service Provider to harvest data from a Data Provider. The format of the query string is a long URL, shown at the bottom of this article.*

After completing the above process, do not expect to see an immediate increase in your usage statistics. In our experience, it took two months before we could actually see the results harvested from Service Providers, which we believe translates into usage increase of our Digital Media Repository.

I hope this technical information provides you with insight for using a low-cost way to achieve global access to your digital collections.

For more information, contact P. Budi Wibowo, Ball State University Libraries’ Head of Digital Libraries and Web Services, BWibowo@bsu.edu, (765) 285-8032.