Whether it is photocopying the majority of a book, improperly citing websites for papers or telling me that they have illegally downloaded books, some of my patrons do not seem to have a basic understanding of what a copyright is or  respect for it.  I want to teach them about copyright and why they should respect it.  I want to strike a balance between being annoying and enlightening.  I don’t want to be the finger wagging librarian. This is what I have done so far but it is far from enough. 

I hear that readers are so excited about books that they illegally download them before the library can get a copy. When I spoke to a teen who said that she had done this, I decided to show her some blogs that discuss the issue. I knew that a ton of YA authors have blogged about this but I started with  S. Jae_Jones because I like her argument. The student read this blog and linked to some of the other blogs.  But, I’m not really sure if this helped or not.

The other day I was explaining that you do indeed need give credit to images that you take off the Internet and you need to find out if you can take those images.  I did have a handy MLA manual but I wanted the student to understand that more than just books, articles should be cited.  Then I remembered that there was a link to on citing apps on my twitter feed. I opened the article at Ed Social Media titled 7 tips for Citing an App in MLA Format and went through it with my patron. I think that this opened her eyes to the idea that all different materials need to be citied.

I am just beginning here so I would love some advice and suggestions