Applying Creative Commons Licenses to Electronic Theses and Dissertations in an Institutional Repository

Presenter Information

Heather Butler, Utah State UniversityFollow

Presentation Type

Lightning Talk

Location

Zoom

Start Date

18-4-2024 1:00 PM

End Date

18-4-2024 1:20 PM

Description

At Utah State University, we’ve uploaded all theses/dissertations to our Institutional Repository since 2008, where they have proven to be our most popular collection. We often receive reuse requests for these materials from graduate students, researchers, and other site visitors. The student author holds the copyright for their work, so the student is the only entity who can give permission for reuse. Many of these requests go unfulfilled because we are unable to contact former students even a few years after their graduation. We plan to mitigate this issue by allowing students to add a Creative Commons license to their work. This talk will outline steps we have taken to support students in selecting a CC license for their work, as well as factors that should be considered before a CC license is applied to an electronic thesis or dissertation. One unexpected, beneficial effect of this program will also be described.

Author Bios

Heather Butler is a library assistant at Utah State University. She works with electronic theses and dissertations and other items in the institutional repository. She is passionate about open access for digital items, especially for student work. She has a Master’s of Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.