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Information Literacy & Library Research: Information Has Value

Information literacy is the ability to know when information is needed and to be able to identify, locate and evaluate, and then legally and responsibly use and share that information.

Information Has Value

Information isn't free. This might be hard to fully grasp in this time of information overload with so much information freely accessible on the internet. But all information belongs to the person who created it. Information also has intrinsic value in the scope of the conversation it represents. How information is published and shared is part of the constructed value system of information.

Intellectual property rights were created to protect and foster innovation, invention, and research. Each culture and society is going to have their own version of it, but it comes down to respecting a person's creation and giving credit where it is due. Intellectual property protections in the United States include: copyright, fair use, open access (creative commons), and the public domain.

Note for INFO 1010:

As you move forward and start writing your paper, it is nice to know why it's so important to cite your sources. This guide on copyright and fair use will give you some background information on why it's so important to protect other people's thoughts and works, and why doing so will also protect your own.

Copyright

Anything created by a person is their intellectual property. In this sense, we are all copyright holders. The paper you write for your English 2010 class is copyrighted and is yours. This library guide is copyrighted and protected. The photos on your phone, and the paintings in the SUMA are copyrighted (unless the copyright has expired, see below). Anything that is created and put into a tangible form belongs to the creator, are their intellectual property, and are copyrighted. 

Copyright means that the creator has the right to make copies, make different versions of the work, and to display or perform their work in public. They can also sell or give away their rights to others. They can also grant permission to others to use their work.

Copyright expires 70 years after the creator's death, at which time the works enter the public domain, where anyone can freely use them. For published books public domain is now a revolving date. Items created in 1927 or earlier entered the public domain in 2023, items created in 1928 or earlier will enter the public domain in 2024, etc. Federal government documents are also automatically in the public domain.

Note: Just because a work is in the public domain doesn't mean you don't need to cite it. You must always give proper attribution to the creator of the work, even if it's in the public domain. So if you want to quote Shakespeare in your paper, make sure you treat it as a quote.

Copyright vs. Plagiarism

There is often confusion associated with copyright infringement, plagiarism, and the difference between them. In short, copyright law is the legal authority entitling a copyright holder to the rights described in federal law and plagiarism is the failure to give credit to those who created the original work. Just because plagiarism has been committed doesn't necessarily mean there is copyright infringement. 

Examples:

  • Publishing a book which contains the Bill of Rights (a Federal document, therefore in the public domain) without attribution would be plagiarism, but not copyright infringement.
  • Shakespeare's works are out of copyright because he's been dead more than 70 years. So you cannot violate his copyright. However, if you were to try to pass off one of his sonnets as your own, you would be plagiarizing.

Fair Use

One exception to copyright is Fair Use. This exemption allows users of copyrighted works to exercise some of the rights normally reserved for the copyright holder. Without this exemption, writers would not be able to quote copyrighted material for socially beneficial purposes such as comment, criticism, teaching, scholarship, research, or news reporting. In order to use the Fair Use exemption, four factors must be considered:

  • the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  • the nature of the copyrighted work; 
  • the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 
  • the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

There is a common misconception that any and all copyrighted material that is used for educational purposes falls under Fair Use. This is an oversimplification, since Fair Use involves an analysis that includes much more than just the nature of the use. The American Library Association has an online tool to help you evaluate whether something can be considered Fair Use called the Fair Use Evaluator. It incorporates all of the four factors above.

Fair Use: What's Okay?

  • Photocopying a few pages of a book, for your own personal use or study
  • Viewing a library copy of a film in your dorm with a few friends
  • Linking to a site or a YouTube video from your own Web site

Fair Use: What's Not Okay?

  • Downloading pirated versions of music or movies through peer-to-peer networks or filesharing
  • Copying copyrighted photographs from the Web and using them on your own Web site
  • Reproducing a piece of art and selling it without permission from the artist
  • Scanning an entire copyrighted book and uploading it to the Web
  • Ripping multiple copies of CDs and giving them out to all your friends