ALA Weblogs and Creative Commons Licenses

The American Library Association and its divisions have launched a number of Weblogs in the last few years. What copyright provisions are these digital publications under? Do they use Creative Commons licenses?

As the list below shows, the vast majority of ALA Weblogs have no explicit copyright statement on their homepage. The absence of such a statement does not mean that under U.S. law the Weblogs are not under standard copyright provisions. They are copyrighted, but by who? Unless ALA has a copyright transfer or work-for-hire agreement with Weblog authors, it appears that the author of each posting holds the copyright to that posting, and copyright permissions for uses of postings that exceed fair use would need to be obtained from their authors. (Some Weblogs have a single author.)

One ALA Weblog uses the standard ALA copyright statement (ALA Techsource), one is copyrighted under the name of the Weblog (ACRLog), one is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States license (YALSA), and three others are under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 licenses (District Dispatch, LITA Blog, and Office for Intellectual Freedom).

Thus, the vast majority of ALA Weblogs are under standard copyright provisions, one is under ALA’s more liberal copyright provisions, and a few are under Creative Commons Licenses that permit noncommercial use without further permission as long as it does not include the creation of derivative works.

• AASLblog: No copyright statement.
• ACRLog: Copyright ACRLog.
• ACRL Podcasts: No copyright statement.
• ALSC Blog No copyright statement.
• ALA Techsource: Copyright ALA Techsource (Copyright Statement and Release)
• CentenniAL: No copyright statement.
• COSWL Cause: No copyright statement.
• Defining Digital Preservation: No copyright statement.
• Digiblog: ALCTS and the Future of Tech Services: No copyright statement.
• Digitization Principles: No copyright statement.
• District Dispatch:
  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
• Electronic Resources Interest Group: No copyright statement.
• Emerging Leaders: No copyright statement.
• GLBT-RT: No copyright statement.
• The Green Kangaroo: No copyright statement.
• Hectic Pace: No copyright statement.
• ITTS Update: No copyright statement.
• LA&M Editors Desk: No copyright statement.
• LEADS from LAMA: No copyright statement.
• Library Education: No copyright statement.
• LITA Blog:
  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
  (LITA Blog Acceptable Use and Copyright Statement)
• MemberBlog: No copyright statement.
• Member Participation Task Force: No copyright statement.
• Metadata Blog: No copyright statement.
• Office for Intellectual Freedom:
  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
• PLA Blog: No copyright statement.
• Public Programs Post: No copyright statement.
• Spectrum: No copyright statement.
• Talking Reference & . . .: No copyright statement.
• Web Planning Retreat: No copyright statement.
• YALSA: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States.