Paper Mills

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an eye-opening investigative article on paper mills. The article Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply attempts to track the physical location of one company called Essay Writers by sleuthing through mail drops, phone records, and business registration from Virginia to Kiev to Manila and back. Fascinating.

Equally fascinating are the interviews with professors and students. Students claiming they only use the papers as research and professors expressing surprise and disbelief that such papers would be requested by their students. And one professor suggesting assignments be "plagiarism proof."

Recommended reading.

Are Librarians Obsolete?

I know you know the answer to that! No! Physical libraries and their staff are vital components to teaching and learning. And while I am a true believer in all things library, I am not sure I could articulate as many reasons as does this article from DegreeTutor Are Librarians Totally Obsolete? 33 Reasons Librarians are Still Needed.

Media specialists and teachers can use many of these reasons (see #5 and all of the reasons that mention the Internet) to bolster their case for school library media programs that provide strong instruction and collaboration.

The World Digital Library

The World Digital Library is a compendium of some 1,200 high-resolution digitized files that allows users to zoom in on ancient documents and archival photographs. The Library has a sophisticated search tool that allows users to browse by keywords, time period, place, type of item and the institution which contributed it. Descriptions of all materials are in seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish), though the documents, books and other components appear in their original languages. The World Digital Library is another resource for students with its mix of primary sources.

The World Digital Library:

....will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

US institutions include the National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress. Other WDL project partners include cultural institutions from Brazil, China, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia and many other countries.

Fair Use and the Courts

This is an interesting article from Ars Technica addressing plagiarism, copyright, and fair use. It reports on the results of a court case in which students sued TurnItIn on the grounds that it violated the students' copyright by storing their papers online. The students lost because according to a federal court decision:

TurnItIn's use was "fair" according to the four factors found in US copyright law, with most weight being given to the "transformative" nature of what TurnItIn was doing with the papers.

Plaintiffs argued that [TurnItIn parent company] iParadigms’ use of their works cannot be transformative because the archiving process does not add anything to the work. TurnItIn merely stores the work unaltered and in its entirety. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals felt that argument "was misguided." Their conclusion:

The use of a copyrighted work need not alter or augment the work to be transformative in nature... iParadigms' use of plaintiffs’ works had an entirely different function and purpose than the original works; the fact that there was no substantive alteration to the works does not preclude the use from being transformative in nature.

So, an interesting interpretation of fair use. The article describes the court decision as a "primer on fair use," providing another copyright resource.

"Doing Honest Work"

Cleaning off my desk this morning I found the January/February issue of Knowledge Quest, the Journal of the American Association of School Librarians. The entire issue focuses on academic honesty and teaching ethical practices. Right up MILI's alley! Articles include:

• It's Not as Simple as It seems: Doing Honest Academic Work in an Age of Point and Click
• Teaming To Teach Ethics
• Ethics from Web 1.0 to Web2.0
• Implementing GoodWork Programs: Helping Students Become Ethical Workers and More

Unfortunately, Knowledge Quest in not available online through ELM, so ask your media specialist if he/she has a copy. Otherwise, you can request articles through Minitex MEDD. This is Voume 37, No. 3. Or, if I can figure out the online access for members of ALA/AASL, I will see what is online.

All Sides to the Debate

ProCon.org is a an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity. It provides pros and cons on diverse controversial topics with facts and quotations from thousands of experts. The sites are free and contain no advertising. Its mission:

Promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan primarily pro-con format. 

The site currently has 20 topics including Big Three Auto, Sexual Orientation, the Death Penalty, Drinking Milk, and more on business, politics, health, science, sports, and more. 

MnKnows: Dig Deeper @ Your Library

MnKnows is a shiny new portal for all of the statewide services offered to Minnesotans through Minitex and their local libraries. From one nice, crisp page, users can go to the MnLink Gateway to find materials not available locally, find databases at ELM4You, search the Reflections Collection of the Minnesota Digital Library, use the Research Project Calculator, and click into AskMn--The Librarian Is In. There is even a link to find your local library. A very handy stop on the research path.

If you haven't promoted AskMn--The Librarian Is In to your students, do so. This is a 24/7 live reference service. Librarians are standing by to answer questions on any topic or to provide research help to college students. AskMn is brought to you by Minitex and participating public and academic libraries. Questions asked during library hours are answered by these Minnesota libraries; after hours questions are answered by librarians that are awake elsewhere. You need a Minnesota public library card to access AskMn.

A Google search on MnKnows returns this, "Did you mean minnows?"