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Answer to My Question about Uploading An Article to ResearchGate

Well, after a couple of rounds of correspondence with someone at Elsevier's Permissions Helpdesk, I got the answer to the question I posed in my May 26 post. I can only upload my preprint to ResearchGate, not the published article. Since it was written almost 30 years ago, when I was using Word Perfect as my writing and editing software, this obviously is not going to happen. I am fairly certain I no longer have that file anyway. It was probably on a disk (floppy disk, maybe?) that I threw out a few years ago when I changed offices. Since Elsevier never issued the early years of the journal issues electronically, I thought I might have a case. Silly me. This is Elsevier.  So much for this endeavor. It does raise the perennial issue of long-term accessible storage of digital material. But this is outside my area of expertise. I will concentrate on my sub-field within librarianship instead. An online graduate course I am teaching on information literacy instruction starts today. It w...

The Winding Path to Deciding If I Can Upload an Old Article to ResearchGate

Back in 1993, a colleague and I wrote an article that I later thought was prescient. It involved online library catalogs and in it I suggested that catalog users be able to leave comments on books they had read. Sounds absolutely commonplace now, but back in 1993, it definitely wasn't. I'd have to go back and read the article again to see exactly what else I contributed to it, and if perhaps there are more things that later came to pass—though obviously not because of my suggestions. The question I grappled with yesterday was whether I could scan and upload the article to ResearchGate, so it has a chance to be read by others. At first I thought it might be available online, but it isn't.  I am not in a big rush since my copy of the journal issue is in my office--I place I haven't been in quite some time. The decision-making process about whether I could upload a copy to a platform other than my institution's repository had a number of complicating factors. Th...

Open Educational Practices: A Reflection Essay

I selected Open Education Practices (OEP) as the openness component of this assignment, because I am interested in the overlap between open pedagogy and OEP. Some authors’ descriptions and definitions of OEP sound very much like what others describe as OP. One such  example of an OEP definition that falls into this area of overlap is Cronin’s, for use in a research study: “collaborative practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of OER, as well as pedagogical practices employing participatory technologies and social networks for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners” (2017, p. 3). A second is from EDUCAUSE’s Learning Initiative’s “7 Things You Should Know about Open Education: Practices”: use/reuse/creation of OER and collaborative, pedagogical practices employing social and participatory technologies for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation and sharing, and empowerment of learners” (2018). Paskevicius and Irvine, reviewing ...

Hadrian's Wall: An Exercise in Using Creative Commons Materials Correctly

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This post is being developed in fulfillment of the 4R Learning Challenge in the OERu LiDA103 online course . For some reason, I've been fascinated with the history of the Romans in Britain. I've read novels and non-fiction about the topic, and visited what sites I could when my husband and I traveled in England. One of those sites is Hadrian's Wall, which stands out to me not only because of its impact, both visual and historical, but also because of my husband's lack of interest in touring it. Usually, he is great about accomodating our differing interests when traveling, and considering how many military museums, sites, and war cemeteries I've been too, that's appropriate. But I persevered. This post will blend sources with appropriate Creative Commons licenses with my reflections. Let's first get a sense of the effect of the wall: It is hard to imagine this knobbly spine of stones as the implacable barrier it once was. a structure two meters thick ...