

by MLibrary / CC BY-NC

The University of Michigan Library now offers content on its website under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. This announcement is significant because the Library had been using the more restrictive Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. By switching to the Attribution license, the Library has granted more permissions to use, share, and repurpose its research and technology guides, video tutorials, toolkits, copyright education materials, bibliographies, and other resources.

From the press release:

“It seemed that for some people the term ‘noncommercial’ implied ‘anti-commerce.’ That wasn’t the message we wanted to send,” says Melissa Levine, MLibrary’s lead copyright officer. “After some careful consideration, and in consultation with all library personnel, we concluded that dropping the commercial restriction would encourage broader use of our educational resources, which was really our intent when we switched to the Creative Commons license in the first place.”

Mike Linksvayer, vice president of Creative Commons, believes MLibrary to be the first major research library to adopt the CC-BY license. “Many other people and projects have dropped the noncommercial condition from their licenses as they‘ve gotten more comfortable with and reaped the benefits of openness, but the U-M Library is the most prominent so far. As other institutions follow, this leadership will be seen as an important marker in the history of increasing access to and collaboration around educational and research materials.”