The Jefferson Digital Commons (JDC) has a new website design!

The JDC is Jefferson’s open access institutional repository. It is a free service of the Academic Commons (AC) that helps you share your scholarly work with the world. All Jefferson faculty, staff, researchers, and students can contribute.

Highlights of the new site

• More resources on open access
  
• New site organizational structure makes it easier to browse content and find what you’re looking for
  
• Mobile and iPad optimization so you can access the site anywhere
  (Note: If viewing the website on an iPad, view in landscape mode, not portrait.)

Why you should submit

Publish your work in the JDC to broaden the reach and impact of your work:

• Your work will show up in search engines like Google, Google Scholar, Bing
  
• Get access to a rich set of metrics like the Author Dashboard and PlumX Metrics, which allow you to understand who is accessing your work and how
  
• Show your support for open access. Often when you publish an article, it gets put behind a paywall, limiting the number of people who can access it. By including your work in the JDC, it will be freely available to anyone

What’s in the JDC

As of early 2020, the Jefferson Digital Commons repository has:

• 19,200+ items and over 4.6 million downloads
  
• been used by 50,000 institutions from more than 230 countries
  
• Learn more about what’s in the JDC

Check out the new website and stay up-to-date on what’s going on at the Academic Commons and Jefferson Archives by following us on Twitter!

Only one month ago we made a series of blog posts about Fair Use Week, where we celebrated the importance of this doctrine in US Copyright Law, and how it benefits libraries and faculty that wish to use copyrighted materials for educational purposes.

Little did we know then how much an important part of our academic lives this doctrine would play, as universities across the country now work to transition to online learning as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Luckily, copyright and scholarly communication librarians are available to help! A collection of librarians have written and signed a public statement that is designed to provide “clarity” for faculty about how copyright law applies to our current unique situation. This document, titled  “Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching and Research,” begins by acknowledging the flexibility of “fair use,” and how the law is well designed to help educators temporarily overcome the hurdles that they are facing. 

It encourages educators to think through fair use issues as they transition to online learning, but not to agonize over their choices. The sudden nature of this shift, combined with the clear public benefit in allowing individuals to continue their education uninterrupted, means that courts are likely to view arguments of fair use favorably. The document encourages faculty to make use of the four factors in their analysis, to use technology to limit access to copyright materials, to use only the amount of a resource that they need to use to meet their teaching goals and to always use legally obtained resources. As long as faculty do these things, and are thoughtful in how they justify their decisions, the law is highly likely to support the temporary use of copyrighted items. 

Finally, it is interesting to note that many publishers, such as JSTOR, Gale, Sage, Cambridge University, among others, are also providing access to their resources during this crisis. However, this temporary access also reminds us of the inequalities that students and citizens all over the globe typically face when it comes to gaining access to academic and scholarly materials. The way that this current crisis helps to highlight this inequity for us all, will be the focus of a future blog post.

Visit our copyright guide for more information.

The Academic Commons is going virtual with Canvas workshops! Starting this week, we’ll host online workshops to introduce Jefferson faculty to our new learning management system, Canvas. REMINDER: Canvas replaces Blackboard at Jefferson on June 30, 2020.

Canvas Basics:
In this hands-on workshop, you will explore Jefferson’s new learning management system—Canvas.

Participants will review access to Canvas for faculty and students: getting to know the layout and organization of Canvas, exploring your dashboard, and introducing key course-building features. We will discuss five critical elements or actions to take in your Canvas course.

This workshop will serve as an introduction to and a general overview of Canvas. Participants will:

• Access Canvas and discuss preferred browsers
• Explore the global navigation menu
• Identify course building blocks
• Describe five critical elements or actions to take in your Canvas course.

Upcoming Basics workshops are scheduled for:

Monday, March 30 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Monday, April 6 from 3:00 -5:00 pm  

Thursday, April 9 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Please register! Registration ensures you have Canvas privileges and access!

Links to join the online training will be emailed to registrants after they sign up. Browse our complete Canvas workshop online schedule.