Hi,
>From what I can see, the Marshall Islands have no copyright law, except
for the Unauthorized Copies of Recorded Materials Act, 1991, which
applies only to some sound recordings and audiovisual material.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory#Mar…
As far as I can tell, they're not party to any relevant treaties - last
December, they acceded to the Convention Establishing the World
Intellectual Property Organization, but this does not appear to have a
practical impact on their copyright law.
If it is the case that the Marshall Islands have no copyright law, then
it would be good to get as much useful content published in the Marshall
Islands copied into Wikisource as we can.
Living in Canberra, I have access to the National Library, which has
copies of the Marshall Islands Journal dating back for quite a long
time, and I'd like to scan and upload some of them, especially since
there is relatively little content related to the Marshall Islands on
Wikipedia, and the journals would be a useful source of information.
(The only other Australian libraries with it, according to Worldcat,
are the State Library of NSW and the University of Adelaide Library.)
However, before I do this, I'd like to get some thoughts on whether I'm
interpreting the situation correctly, and if there are any precautions
which I would need to take before doing so.
Thanks,
Riley Baird
Greetings, Australian Wikipedians!
Today we have had the big announcement (see email below) that the "Wikipedia
+ Libraries: Better Together" course is now available for worldwide reuse.
"Wikipedia + Libraries: Better Together" was a major project undertaken by
OCLC (a global library co-operative) and the Wikimedia Foundation (as
organisations both committed to the goal of free public knowledge) and
supported financially by the Knight Foundation (a USA philanthropic fund
established to foster better informed and engaged communities to ensure a
healthy democracy). The project's goal was to provide an online course to
enable USA public library staff to better understand Wikipedia and how to
better incorporate Wikipedia in their everyday options serving the broader
community. As well as online materials, the course involved weekly live
webinars (with recordings available afterwards), discussion forums, and
other tools.
Although I was not involved in the course development, I was involved in the
delivery of the course as one of the "experienced Wikipedians" recruited as
the mentors who participated in the Q&A in the discussion forums and in
giving one-on-one advice on taking first steps contributing to Wikipedia.
Also, Jacinta Sutton from State Library of Queensland was one of librarians
interviewed in the webinars about the Wikimedia initiatives at State Library
of Queensland, who has long been a partner of Wikimedia Australia. Jacinta's
inclusion in this USA-focussed program demonstrates just how much respect
SLQ has earned in the Wikimedia & Library communities; Jacinta was also an
invited speaker at an OCLC Asian conference in Tokyo last year.
The entire course has now been packaged up under a CC-BY-SA license so it
can be freely re-used and modified as required worldwide. I would love to
see a similar course run here in Australia for our librarian community as
all kinds of libraries would benefit from it, not just public librarians,
but others such as state libraries, university libraries and school
libraries. I believe any library that has users who are reading Wikipedia
and/or wanting to contribute to it would benefit from this course so they
could better serve their users' needs. But to roll such a course out,
whether on a national, regional or local basis will still require a lot of
resources, including organisation, technical and human.
So I am hoping I can count on our local Wikimedian community to be
supportive of any Australian initiatives in whatever ways you can.
Kerry
From: Proffitt,Merrilee [mailto:proffitm@oclc.org]
Sent: Wednesday, 6 June 2018 3:52 AM
Subject: Wikipedia + Libraries: it's a wrap
Hi all,
I wanted to let you, our Wikipedia Course Guides, know that we have
officially wrapped up our project!
The WebJunction and OCLC communications team did a great job on the website
which has links to all the curriculum materials plus the "Librarians that
Wikipedia" series of interviews.
<https://www.webjunction.org/explore-topics/wikipedia-libraries.html>
https://www.webjunction.org/explore-topics/wikipedia-libraries.html
I also want to encourage you all to read the final report for the grant -
this is full of information on the entire project. A reminder as you read
this; much of what is shared under project outcomes was funded by the Knight
Foundation - for the sake of simplicity and transparency we decided to
combine reporting about the entirety of the project with the WMF funded
portion of the project.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/OCLC/A_Wikipedian-in-Residen
ce_to_Engage_500_Librarians_and_their_Communities/Final>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/OCLC/A_Wikipedian-in-Residenc
e_to_Engage_500_Librarians_and_their_Communities/Final
Thank you for all the work you put into this project! I know that for many
of our course participants getting advice and guidance from you and having
you serve as the voices and faces of our project was a real highlight.
Best,
Merrilee
--
Merrilee Proffitt
OCLC . Senior Manager, OCLC Research Library Partnership
155 Bovet Rd, Suite 500, San Mateo, CA 94402
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