Faculty want course readings to be conveniently posted within D2L, but posting PDFs on D2L is illegal in many cases and might accidentally lead to the loss of online resources provided by the library. In this session, we’ll explain these issues and suggest best practices for sharing articles and chapters with your students

Duevel, Casey

Gustafson-Sundell, Nat

English

Institutional Repository for Minnesota State University, Mankato

1PDF posting is a major problem and a threat to the university. Nearly 6,000 PDFs are posted on our D2L site. We happen to know because of our work with students within D2L that many of these PDFs are articles, book chapters, or other restricted works.We are offering this presentation in order to explain why it is not a good idea to post PDFs in D2L. We will offer a couple reasons why PDF posting is a bad idea. We will then offer an alternative to PDF posting, and we will explain why our alternative, citation searching, is good for students and the university. We will then ask for feedback about the information we provided, because we are hoping to expand and improve our communication efforts.2I will start by talking about print resources. Print resources are pretty much all covered by copyright by default, with some notable exceptions such as public domain, creative commons license, etc.3At its most basic, Copyright is the right to copy. Under copyright law, the owner of the copyright has the exclusive rights to copy the item. Case closed.4But wait, there is a separate section in copyright law allowing some amount of copying depending on the extent and effects of that copying. This is called “Fair Use.” - Under the fair use provisions, you are allowed some flexibility in copying, but when it comes to copying texts without any transformative use, that flexibility is quite limited. - Basically, you can get away with copying one chapter from one book, but no more. If you copy more, you risk breaking the law. - If you copy articles from print journals, you risk breaking the law.- Casey will talk more later about your alternatives when it comes to print resources. 5Electronic resources – that is, any library resources you find while using Google Scholar or MavScholar – are limited by copyright. In addition, they are limited by license agreements between the university and the vendors providing the electronic resources. For our purposes today, Electronic Resources are a greater concern than print resources because students rely so heavily on electronic journals to complete assignments. You might even say that the visible library – this building and all the books and other stuff in it – is just the tip of the library iceberg. The biggest part of the library is online.{See Google Scholar search}6License agreements can vary quite a bit. Unfortunately, the library must worry about complying with the lowest common denominator among these licenses… - I’ve sampled from a single agreement here. This is a fairly strict agreement, but not unusual. This agreement covers over 1500 of the journals the library provides.- As you can see, permission is granted for some kinds of copying – you can copy an article to a local drive for your own scholarly use, but you can only access the articles via the secure network. This second clause means that you can only access articles via link to their platform from the library’s IP addresses.7For the avoidance of doubt, the license makes clear that copies are permitted for personal use.8But, as you can see in these further clauses, you cannot make copies for course packs or electronic reserve.9And again, for the avoidance of doubt, you are absolutely prohibited from posting your copy of the article for access anywhere access other than the secure network (previously defined as the library’s IP addresses).In sum, if you are posting PDFs of articles on D2L, you are breaking the law and you are creating risk for both the university and the state of MN.10Another important thing to think about when you post PDFs is that the library cannot track statistics for the resources we purchase. So, your one click to download the PDF is all that is counted, not each click for every student in your class. This is important to you because we regularly use those statistics to make informed decisions about which subscriptions we continue to provide or cut.Instead of PDFs, if you lead your students to the citation we get data that shows usage, leading us to continue purchasing your favorite journals.  We also have the ability to share usage statistics with accrediting bodies, who find high usage of core journals quite impressive. Another thing to think about is that if you are posting PDFs because the library doesn’t have a subscription… we will never know that you WANT the content, thus never considering it for purchase.  It is a vicious cycle, really.  We’ll go into how to request anunowned title a bit later…11This is sample of a report created by a team within our Journal Review Committee. It is for one of my departments, within the College of Education and it shows the top 865 Education journals, as rated by SCImago as well as their cost and usage. We use these factors, along with importance to the department to shape our decisions about what we keep and what we cut.We also use this information to run reports when we are asked to speak with accrediting bodies.12That previous slide helps to populate slides like this.  I was able to use information like this (along with a similar report for our top Psych Journals) at a CSP accreditation site visit. In case you have no idea what this graph means… Basically, this entire chart encompasses our 865 rated Education Journals. This far bar shows that we have access to 98% the top 86 journals… 96% of the next top 86, 93% of the 3rd tier, etc.I mentioned this at the accreditation visit and the accreditor mentioned this fact later in the conversation, so I believe that it was quite impactful.13At that same meeting, the accreditor asked if we had access to a specific title… Because of all of our data gathering,  I could confidently say that not only did we provide access, I could show strong use.  It had been used 2,412 times in the last 3 years.  Impressive!14So, now that we have told you why posting PDFs is problematic, what can YOU do about it? How can you get students to the articles that you need them to read?What we are proposing as the BEST thing that you can do right now is direct citations to lead students to find materials at the library for EVERY SINGLE item that is a resource the library purchases.And what I mean by that, explicitly, is that we're asking you to give your students the full citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, or whatever citation style makes you happy and tell them to find it at the library webpage.We have put together a LibGuide to help you with this information. On that LibGuide, you will find the information we talked about today, as well as a link to the infographic I will be handing out and a handout that you can link to within D2L that explains to student how to find their readings. It also has a link to a copyright and fair use LibGuide created by Barb Bergman.If you can’t remember this link, it is also found by going to Class and Subject Guides / Teaching Resources for Instructors / Article Sharing15Handout our copies.This first one has some reminders in the text about why posting PDFs is problematics, the text in yellow give you a step by step guide how to provide a citation to your students. The box on the bottom left shows how students will take the title of the article and search for it in MavScholar. The caveat in the purple area lets you know what to do if you run into problems.The second handout is an instruction sheet for students to learn about how to access known citations in MavScholar. This was created specifically for you to use with your syllabi, assignments, or content list on D2L to walk your students through finding readings in MavScholar. Please feel free to use it. Again, it is found electronically on the LibGuide.16We know what you're thinking. We really do. We know that this is far more complex for you AND your students than simply posting a document. And we’re not trying to make your life harder. Really, but it is the right this to do.17So, you may be thinking to yourself, what about just LINKING? Surely linking is okay?Technically, you CAN link to articles, but it’s a bit complicated. (You will know this if you have tried to provide links to library resources previously, it can be a bit of a headache. This is because the links often break unless you know where to look for stable URLs. This wouldn't be so bad if the URLS were in some sort of uniform place, but unfortunately, it varies by each vendor, which you can see in this slide (which is just a sampling). The links also need to be run through our EZ Proxy so that any student off campus can use the links.18What are the benefits again?So, you may need a reminder why we want you to do this again...Remember, A) it's NOT breaking the law. That’s always nice. B) The library uses those clicks and downloads that you and your students generate. They are used to justify keeping your favorite resources. C) Another aspect that is INCREDIBLY important in my mind is that giving students citations and showing them how to USE the library, rather than skipping right over that step is teaching basic information literacy. Even though they may grumble about it, learning how to use the library’s resources is an essential skill for young scholars. They will (probably) thank you for it in the long run.19We have tried to anticipate some other questions that faculty may have.What about PDFs that you find freely available on the internet?Freely available PDFs such as government reports do not fall under licensing restrictions because we do not purchase them. Feel free to post them. BUT a lot of stuff freely available on the internet is there illegally, so BEWARE.What about your syllabi, course assignments, etc.?You own these! Licenses do not cover these materials so they are not prohibited in any way, feel free to post them.20What if I do not know if what I am posting is a subscribed resource or not?Just ask us! We promise not to judge you. Stop by the reference desk or call us at 507-389-5958. You could also chat with your favorite librarian. If you do not have a favorite librarian, we recommend that you find one. See this list for some likely options: http://lib.mnsu.edu/collections/cd/librns.html21Oh no! I cannot find it in MavScholar! All is LOST!On the contrary, we can help! Simply contact articlehelp@mnsu.edu and we will see if we can track down access to the article. If we cannot find it you still have options… See below.22What if the library owns a hard copy of the material?Whether it is a print copy of a journal article or a chapter of a book that we own in print, we can place it on reserve. Fill out this Reserve Request Form.23What if the library does not own a copy of the article I need?If we do not own it, you can recommend it for purchase by contacting your library liaison. If we decide to purchase it, wait until we gain access and then follow citation directions above.If we do not own it and we either decide not to purchase a subscription or a subscription is no longer available, we can purchase the rights to put it on electronic reserve at the library. See this page for information.If we do not own it and YOU own a copy and want to put it on electronic reserve, fill out the reserve form.242526

Course Management System Best Practices for Accessing Library Resources

https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1147&amp;context=lib_services_fac_pubs

Course Management System Best Practices for Accessing Library Resources

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Institutional Repository for Minnesota State University, Mankato