information commons

"Offers a radical precedent for a more democratic digital culture, and new models for the next generation of activists, educators, coders, and makers"--Amazon.

A resource guide to developing information commons, a model for information service delivery in the library, featuring twenty case studies that share stories of successes and failures, with summary data charts, physical descriptions, photographs, and sample brand and graphics.

"The idea of the learning commons ... [is] to transform the central idea of a school library stocked with resources repository into a vibrant and central component of teaching and learning in the school community ... [Introduces] the idea of the learning commons as the extension of each classroom, the cross-classroom connection, and the center of active learning that extends beyond the school ... [Includes] resources to use and strategies to build and create a ... learning community"--Pages ix-x.

"A smart, lively history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society--and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons--from Slate correspondent Justin Peters. Aaron Swartz was a zealous young advocate for the free exchange of information and creative content online. He committed suicide in 2013 after being indicted by the government for illegally downloading millions of academic articles from a nonprofit online database. From the age of fifteen, when Swartz, a computer prodigy, worked with Lawrence Lessig to launch Creative Commons, to his years as a fighter for copyright reform and open information, to his work leading the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), to his posthumous status as a cultural icon, Swartz's life was inextricably connected to the free culture movement. Now Justin Peters examines Swartz's life in the context of 200 years of struggle over the control of information. In vivid, accessible prose, The Idealist situates Swartz in the context of other "data moralists" past and present, from lexicographer Noah Webster to ebook pioneer Michael Hart to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In the process, the book explores the history of copyright statutes and the public domain; examines archivists' ongoing quest to build the "library of the future"; and charts the rise of open access, copyleft, and other ideologies that have come to challenge protectionist IP policies. Peters also breaks down the government's case against Swartz and explains how we reached the point where federally funded academic research came to be considered private property, and downloading that material in bulk came to be considered a federal crime. The Idealist is an important investigation of the fate of the digital commons in an increasingly corporatized Internet, and an essential look at the impact of the free culture movement on our daily lives and on generations to come"--.

Explains what copyright means, the five rights of creators, what it means for a work to be part of the public domain, the protections involved in intellectual property, what Creative Commons is, how to find Creative Commons material and give credit, and more.

Provides tips and suggestions to help public, school, and academic libraries establish a learning-commons area, which can be used as a go-to location for the patrons' teaching, researching, and learning needs, discussing technologies and information resources, and including end-of-chapter checklists.

Examines debates over cultural ownership, discussing the battle over the rights to intellectual property, and tracing the history of the idea of "the commons" as a possible solution to the problem.

A guide to transforming school libraries and computer labs into dynamic places with both physical and virtual resources, including planning rubrics, worksheets, interview questions, charts, and other tools to help administrators and educators make the concept of a learning commons a reality in their schools.