PALINET Leadership Network and permissions
Yes, it’s another PALINET Leadership Network (PLN) post. If you haven’t signed up yet and either are or think you might eventually become a library leader (however you define “leader”), you should–and you should consider actively participating, either by adding content to pages or on the Forums.
But we know that PLN won’t grow just by providing a platform for people to add content to. We continue to add content from other sources–and when “we” is really plural for “I,” some of those sources are liblogs. I’ve already added one article excerpted (with almost no changes) from Michelle McLean’s Connecting librarian and another one created by combining an adapted version of a post by Meredith Farkas, a related post by Jeff Scott, and two article summaries already part of the ongoing PLN feature Leader’s Digest.
There will certainly be more. I have a folder of source material here and will be asking more bloggers for blanket permission to use entire posts or portions of posts, always with attribution and links to the originals, as entire PLN articles or portions of PLN articles. I’m asking even when no such permission is required–when the blogs operate under explicit Creative Commons licenses that allow derivative works.
(Yes, I know, I don’t ask permission to quote from blogs in Cites & Insights, unless I’m quoting so extensively that it can’t possibly be fair use–but in C&I I’m nearly always quoting at least partially for purposes of commentary and criticism, which is not the case for PLN.)
With that lengthy preamble, I’m actually making two points:
- If you get email from me, either waltcrawford at gmail.com or crawford at palinet.org, asking for such blanket permission, it’s really your choice, but I’d love to have the permission. I think McLean and Scott and Farkas will all tell you that I edit sensitively: I’m not about to remake your work in a way that changes your voice or your intent.
- You can take the initiative and send me email–to either of those addresses–granting such blanket permission. I’ll add you to the list, with thanks. If your blog is one I haven’t been reading, I’ll add it to my list, at least for a while. Heck, you could even add a comment here and I’ll add you to the list.
No promises as to how many blog posts I’m likely to reuse. It depends on other issues, how much other material is showing up (and where we see holes in the fabric), whether people start contributing original articles for PLN (which can be entered directly into the wiki or sent to me to do the MediaWiki markup), how much time I can spend on this…
