Recently Asked Questions (RAQs)

A taskforce at the college is wanting to use a recent song and video on Youtube. This would be a traditional lip dub with a little step up in production as they would use some greenscreen and use some face tracking to animate anti-racist quotes on the faces of the participants. They want to mimic some of the effects in the video as well as add some of our own. So it is transforming the work. Also, this would be a new creation based on the content of the video and use of the music.

In short, they are looking to do a lip dub of the song with their own spin on the video. The college has their own video streaming platform so this would not be on Youtube.
This would be for the campus community but there might be that people could share outside the organization.

The intent is to educate the campus and is part of a greater initiative to promote diversity equity and inclusion.

Is it considered fair use for a student to reproduce a copyrighted photograph for public display in an academic institution having cited the original published source but not having sought and received express permission from the copyright holder? The image is reproduced in its entirety with overplayed text added by the student. The posters are the product of an academic exercise. It has been proposed to display them for a period of 2 months in an area open to the public.

An internationally known band released various music videos for the purpose of a contest they were holding. Fans were asked to create a new video using the clips provided. One of our professors downloaded and saved the music videos and would like to share them with his students so they can use them for an editing project. He would like to post the copied files in his password protected class management system (Black Board.) However, we would also like his students to be able to share their projects either in an eportfolio or online.

My initial reaction is that he should get permission from the copyright holder / publisher for permission even though the band released the content for a contest. I see many danger zones.

ResearchGate is often a place individuals will go to snag PDFs which are typically provided by authors, not publishers. It refers to itself as a community and network for researchers to share and discuss their research with others from around the globe. ResearchGate explicitly states that they are not liable for any copyright infringement, and that the responsibility rests with the individual; it is entirely up to the individual to either post the PDF to be downloaded freely, or to send the PDF to individuals upon request.

I have multiple questions surrounding the use of ResearchGate. Number one, should libraries be directing individuals to ResearchGate to ask authors for copies of their articles? Number two, should our document delivery service be providing copies of PDFs from ResearchGate to our library patrons? I am personally very hesitant to refer anyone to ResearchGate as I find most faculty researchers are not aware of who truly holds the copyright to their published articles. Thank you!

I'm working on a research project with other librarians who work with nursing schools from across the United States.

Our research question involves the restrictiveness of requirements for articles used in student writing assignments, i.e. limiting to articles published in the past 5 years and one author must be a nurse.

Our data collection plan involves collecting syllabi and assignments for nursing school writing assignments to analyze for the criteria that articles must meet.

We would like to know before we begin, do syllabi and course assignments constitute intellectual property that is protected by copyright laws?

Thank you for your assistance with this!