- This lesson engages learners with a specific application of the doctrine of fair use: online storytime. As this requires a baseline knowledge of fair use principles, it should be used as a lesson after students understand fair use.
This episode is appropriate for courses engaging with the topic of fair use within a specific factual context: online storytime. Students should have a basic understanding of fair use before engaging with this material, though, as it requires a fairly advanced analysis of fair use. This lesson is most appropriate for school librarians and librarians working in public libraries, but it is also a useful discussion of fair use principles and could be helpful for any audience wishing to engage with fair use in more detail.
Assignment
- Read the whitepaper on Reading Aloud: Fair Use Enables Translating Classroom Practices to Online Learning by Meredith Jacob et al licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://tinyurl.com/read-aloud-online
- After reading the whitepaper, listen to the 9 minute Copyright Chat episode on Reading Aloud and Fair Use.
Total homework time: approximately 1 hour 15 minutes.
During Class
Consider the following hypotheticals in groups for 15 minutes. When discussing each hypothetical, consider whether the policy is legal, can be justified under fair use, and whether the policy demonstrates a risk averse or a more open policy. Discuss why a particular library would adopt a more or less risk averse approach.
- Local public library A engages in online storytimes and streams them live over Facebook to the general public.
- Local public library B will only provide online storytimes to patrons using a secure link and will only read books where they have express permission from the publisher to do so.
- Local public library C will only provide online storytimes to patrons using a secure link and they are not recorded.
Discuss the hypotheticals together as an entire class. Were any of the policies adopted by the public libraries in the hypotheticals clearly illegal? If not, why do you think the libraries took such different approaches to online storytime?
Total class time: 30 to 45 minutes.