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

One Thought on “Being an Advocate for Copyrights

  1. Not citing images (or even acknowledging that images are intellectual property) is one of my biggest pet peeves. A whole department of teachers here had a PD day run by a woman who told the audience, “Google Images is so great–just search for whatever you want and then use the pictures in your lessons!” As a result, some of the teachers (and, I’m guessing, some of our students) think “citing” an image means writing “Found on Google Images.”

    My analogy: in citing a book, you’d never just say, “Here’s a book I found in the public library.” You’d cite author, title, copyright date, etc. So why not treat images the same way?

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