Creative Commons: for authors who want to share

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

The question of the value of Creative Commons to the author has 
come up in recent Liblicense discussions.

As an author, I use Creative Commons licenses to let people know 
that I wish to share my work, and under what Terms.  For example, 
my scholarly blog, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, has 
a Creative Commons license of 
Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike. This lets people know that 
I am happy to let others use my work and creative derivatives 
(for example, translations), as long as I am given credit, and 
they, too share their derivatives with others. Anyone interested 
in commercial use of IJPE blogposts, should get in touch with me.

I can also use CC licenses to commit my work to the public 
domain, or, if I create software, to designate such as open 
source.

There are a number of CC license options.  Any of these moves us 
toward the libre (permissions) aspect of OA.  For the definitions 
of gratis and libre open access (basically free to read, free to 
re- use), see Peter Suber's article in the August SPARC Open 
Access Newsletter, at: 
http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/08-02-08.htm#gratis- 
libre

To learn more about Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/

For the academic author for whom the broadest possible 
dissemination of work is essential, CC-licensing is helpful, as 
it provides advance permission to readers to further disseminate 
/reuse the work, with appropriate attribution.

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com