Thing 19 - Keeping things legal!

Good old copyright!  It's amazing how often it comes up working in libraries.  I've never been so pleased to receive a poster for the library as the updated guidance CILIP sent out when copyright reforms in the UK were implemented.  CILIP's Copyright Guidance can be found here and the poster they produced is simple enough to relate to the majority of people coming into a public library.  We've had so many occasions where the leader of a walking group has "just popped in to copy the route from an OS map to hand out" or where crafters have wanted to copy a knitting pattern to attach to kits they're selling at fairs and we've had to explain why that isn't something we can allow.  Now, we can illustrate what "fair use" is things are far simpler.

The online world has blurred the lines quite a bit.  I often find myself called to help someone on the public computers "get rid of the mark on this picture I want to use".  Children in particular regularly search good old Google for images to add to homework projects and it's a useful point to start a conversation with them (and hopefully the adult with them) about who owns content online.

The information in Thing 19 has been very useful for me to share with staff in the library about finding Creative Commons images to use in our posters - something I don't think I'd explained well enough to them previously.  Yes it may just be for a poster for the library for a couple of weeks but has anyone taken a photo of that poster and shared it online?  For that matter, when it was put on a poster did we properly attribute it to the owner?  It may take a little longer sometimes to do what we want to do but it's important that we're setting an example and doing it right.

For the content I've created on this blog so far - certainly I have to think about how it affects me.  So far I've thought about it in terms of the image I portray as an employee but I need to think more about whether because my experiences relate to my role the content I create could be argued as being owned by my employer even though I've been careful to use my own time to work on it.

This is definitely one I need to continue to ponder.