Fair Use and the Arts: Collage-Making at Snell Library

ARL-FairUseWeek-White-Logo February 20-24 is Fair Use Week, and this year Snell Library is focusing on the arts. Come and make a collage with us…details below! What is fair use? It’s a right granted to us that allows us to use copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright holder, under certain circumstances. The central purpose of the doctrine of fair use is to encourage creative expression and innovation through the transformative use of intellectual property. It is part of U.S. copyright law. People often ask, “how much of someone else’s work can I use without asking permission and have it be considered fair use?” The answer is “it depends.” Fairness is something that needs to be assessed for each potential usage, against four factors:
  1. The intended purpose and character of the use, such as whether it’s for commercial or noncommercial, educational use.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work – is it factual or creative?
  3. The amount of the portion to be used in relation to the entire work.
  4. The effect of the use on the potential market for the original work.
There’s also a concept of “transformativeness,” which, while not specifically codified in copyright law, has been shown to be a favored use. Transformativeness has to do with the creation of a new work through the use of others’ work. Recording artists and visual artists use remixing, mashups, and sampling in this way. Sometimes they need to ask permission, but sometimes appropriation of others’ work is considered fair use, and the courts agree: Make a Collage and Learn More About Fair Use! Creativity can be a great way to think about how fair use can apply in your research output and other work. Our Art and Architecture librarian, Regina Pagani, and I will be hosting a collage table in the lobby of Snell Library on Thursday and Friday this week (2/23 and 2/24), from 2:00 to 4:00. Stop by and find out more about fair use, and make your own collage to take with you or contribute to a larger collaborative effort! Further Reading:

2017 Call for Proposals: The CERES Exhibit Toolkit

CERES Exhibit Toolkit Call for Proposals The Digital Scholarship Group is now accepting proposals for the next round of CERES Exhibit Toolkit development (formerly known as The DRS Project Toolkit). The CERES Exhibit Toolkit is a user-friendly set of tools for building digital projects and publications using digital materials from the Digital Repository Service (DRS) or the Digital Public Library of America. With CERES users can create exhibits, galleries, maps, timelines, and playlists that draw digital materials dynamically from the DRS or the DPLA. We are also excited to announce a new program of support for classroom use of the CERES Exhibit Toolkit. We invite proposals from faculty for courses to be held in Fall 2017 and Spring 2018. Feature development CERES will be a collaborative endeavor and a great opportunity to experiment with publishing your project’s materials. If you have a project idea, we’d love to hear from you! Just answer a few questions about your project to apply. Examples of successful projects from the first two years of the CERES project include: Accepted projects will partner with the DSG and DRS teams to use CERES to securely store their project materials in the DRS and create a customized WordPress site to publish those materials on the web. If you have questions, the DSG staff are glad to meet and discuss project proposals before the deadline; please contact us at DSG@northeastern.edu to set up a meeting. Please visit the DRS Resources page for more information about the DRS. If you don’t think CERES is right for your project, but you are still interested in securely storing project files in the DRS, contact Sarah Sweeney.

Catherine Allen and the Early Years of Title IX

Written by Teresa de Costa, School of Journalism. Catherine AllenNortheastern’s Archives and Special Collections have compiled the works of Catherine Allen, a prominent Boston educator and professor at Bouvé College. Allen’s collection includes her notes and pictures of life achievements throughout her career in Boston. Authors Diane LeBlanc and Allys Swan published the book “Playing for Equality: Oral Histories of Women Leaders in the Early Years of Title IX.” The bulk of the research which informed this work was done with the help of Northeastern’s Archives. Swan and LeBlanc examine Allen’s life as a musician, coach and teacher. During Allen’s time in Boston, she taught at Bouvé College and spoke all over the world as a coeducational advocate. According to Michelle Romero, Assistant Archivist, “In 1980 the Boston-Bouvé College merged with Northeastern University’s College of Education to form the Boston-Bouvé College of Human Development Professions. In 1992 the school merged with the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions and continues at Northeastern University as the Bouvé College of Health Sciences.” Allen observed Northeastern students in her notes and called them “Beautifully educated.” Her work with former Northeastern President Asa Knowles created a coeducational program ten years before Title IX. Title IX allowed anyone to be educated without prejudice. With Allen’s passing in 2002 her legacy still lives in the surviving students from Bouvé College. “They created a sisterhood where they share fond memories.” Said Romero “These women are real go getter’s.” The work of Catherine Allen and Bouvé Exhibit can be viewed at Snell Library.

Dragon Prayer Book Featured on News @ Northeastern

Photo cour­tesy of the North­east Doc­u­ment
Con­ser­va­tion Center

Rare book from Northeastern archives selected for ‘illuminated manuscripts’ display November 15, 2016 by Thea Singer

A palm-​​size 15th-​​century book from Northeastern’s archives at Snell Library was selected to be part of the multi-​​venue exhibit “Beyond Words: Illu­mi­nated Man­u­scripts in Boston Col­lec­tions.” Described by its cura­tors as “the largest exhibit of pre-​​1600 man­u­scripts ever mounted in North America,” “Beyond Words” fea­tures more than 260 items span­ning the 9th to the 17th cen­turies donated by 19 Boston-​​area libraries and museums.

Northeastern’s con­tri­bu­tion is a Dominican Prayer Book of more than 500 pages, with text in Latin hand­written in the Gothic book­hand style. It has just a single illustration—a grotesque inside a large blue “R” on the first page—but red and blue text is sprin­kled throughout. The dec­o­ra­tions are what char­ac­terize it as “illu­mi­nated.” The man­u­script includes com­po­nents of a Book of Hours, prayers that were to be said at spec­i­fied hours of the day, and the prayer cycle Office of the Dead, among other devotions. Tiny tabs extending from the edges of cer­tain pages indi­cate where par­tic­ular sec­tions begin. [Read the Full Article]

New and improved! Portal to Latino/a collections

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Announcing the Archives and Special Collections new portal to Boston’s latino/a history, http://latinohistory.library.northeastern.edu/!

Boston’s Latino/a Community History Collection contains images, documents, and posters selected from the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción records and the La Alianza Hispana records held in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department. The documents scanned from the collection include organizational charts and histories, committee and taskforce meeting minutes, fact sheets, by-laws, articles of incorporation, annual reports, program descriptions and brochures, newsletters, and organizational reports. The records available in this online collection document public policy formation, community relations, affordable housing, urban planning and housing rehabilitation, cultural and educational programming, violence prevention, and minority rights during the last decades of the 20th century.

The collection was originally scanned and made available in 2009 by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services but has since been completely overhauled.  Each item was given additional item-level metadata allowing users to dig deeper into the collection.  The searching and browsing interfaces were rebuilt using the Library’s Digital Scholarship Group’s CERES: Exhibit Toolkit, giving users immediate and searchable access to the collection.  CERES is a user-friendly platform with which faculty, staff, and student scholars at Northeastern University are building WordPress exhibits incorporating curated digital objects.

To learn more about the Digital Scholarship Group and CERES, go to http://dsg.neu.edu/the-drs-project-toolkit-is-now-ceres-exhibit-toolkit/