The University Copyright Center: Supporting Students, Faculty, and Staff
The University Copyright Center is a valuable resource for the Ball State University community. This unit, which is a part of the University Libraries, is one of only three copyright-focused programs offered by the universities of Indiana to their academic communities. The other two are at IUPUI and Purdue University.
The Center's function is to inform faculty and educate students and staff in the lawful use of someone else's intellectual property. This is an important faculty concern for face-to-face classroom presentations and distance education classes. The Center's Manager provides training and presentations in intellectual property (IP).
In today's classrooms, faculty are both aware and involved in a new way of considering copyright." Out" are the restrictive legalities of using copyrighted materials and "in" is the practical approach of using copyrighted materials for classroom instruction. The University Copyright Center assists our faculty with this paradigm shift by being involved in a variety of approaches for making IP available for meeting instructional objectives, classroom enhancements, instructional strategies, research, and integrating technology and IP in the classroom.
The Center advances its responsibilities through nine, practical approaches.
1. The Center maintains a website, which includes a wide selection of resources in a variety of textual and audiovisual formats. Some of the instructional assets of the Center's Homepage include video spots; royalty free music, graphics, and podcast resources, PowerPoint presentations and FAQs, among others.
2. The Center offers unique services for students, faculty, and staff. For students, personalized classroom presentations are crafted on a wide variety of topics including copyright basics, fair use, peer-to-peer file sharing, and legal MP3s, and added a
Copyright for Students homepage.
Faculty have taken advantage of the Center's capacity to assist in the understanding that there is a significant role for those who teach our future and practicing teachers to incorporate a practical, useful approach to copyright in their classrooms. For faculty, special presentations have included "Fair Use or Misuse?" "Blackboard and the Copyright Law," and "The TEACH Act: What IP can you use in your Distance Education course?" Other unique services provided by the Manager involve securing musical performances for the Bracken Matinee Musicales, serving as the media consultant for the College of Fine Arts, and suggesting Digital Library Initiative collaborative projects to enhance the availability of digital learning objects.
3. The Center has several types of unique content including two nationally recognized 30-second videos. One is on the need for copyright instruction in the classroom and the second is on using the royalty-free picture databases.
4. The Center can be involved with advisement to the Ball State committees that involve IP. For example, these might include the University Senate's Publications and Intellectual Property Committee and the Presidential appointment Patent and Copyright Committee. The Center is always available to committee members for intellectual property concerns.
5. The Center's Manager promotes the Center and proper uses of intellectual property by serving as a resource in various capacities throughout the state and the country.
6. The Office organizes an annual
copyright conference hosted at Ball State, featuring nationally-recognized IP attorneys.
7. The Manager serves as a resource person who is responsible for various specialized, intellectual property duties, such as Federal Copyright Law compliance, serving as the U.S. Copyright Office's Agent for Ball State, and the person who authorizes fair use for e-Reserves for the University Libraries.
8. The Manager is available to present at national IP conferences and in local and regional fora.
9. The University Copyright Center supports the School of Extended Education's courses, including any and all requirements for intellectual property. As copyright becomes more critical in academe, the need for an academic, intellectual property-focused copyright center grows in importance to avoid misusing someone else's intellectual property.
The University Copyright Center is a valuable resource for the Ball State University community. This unit, which is a part of the University Libraries, is one of only three copyright-focused programs offered by the universities of Indiana to their academic communities. The other two are at IUPUI and Purdue University.
The University Copyright Center is at the forefront of working with faculty by providing instructional approaches, including the tactical deployment and the amplification of the proper use of intellectual property.
For answers to your questions, please contact
Fritz Dolak at the University Copyright Center.