If your tax dollars help create a resource, shouldn't it be shared freely? Yes, of course, but that's not always the case. Creative Commons is doing something about this with their Open Licensing Policy Toolkit to “support the education of government staff creating, adopting and implementing open licensing policies.”
With open licensing, resources that are created with public dollars are available to citizens to use and build upon. As the introduction to the Toolkit states:
"The American people deserve open access to federally funded digital educational, training, and informational materials because they paid for them with tax dollars. By requiring the recipients of federal funds to release publicly funded resources with an open copyright license — and provide support for the efficient use of openly licensed material — we will improve the quality of vital public services and make them more cost efficient. We can ensure that the billions of taxpayer dollars invested in the creation of educational materials produce resources that are freely and legally available to the public to use, share, and build upon."
Celebrate the new toolkit
Limited time only! Help us celebrate version 2.0 of the Library of Things Toolkit by chipping in $100 and receive an advance print edition.
Created wiki-style, the current draft of the Toolkit is open to anyone to improve and modify it. While tailored for U.S. government federal staff, it can be revised to meet local, regional, or national needs of any community or country.
Tools available in the ever-growing Toolkit are:
An overview of why open licensing policy is needed
An introduction to copyright and open licensing
How other agencies use open licensing and what can be learned from them
How to write your open licensing policy
How to add the policy to your grant and contract boilerplates
How to train your agency team
How to educate your grantees and contractors
How to provide and promote free online access to open resources
How to build community around open resources
How to promote collaboration within and across agencies
Cat Johnson is a content strategist and teacher helping community builders create strong brands. A longtime writer, marketing pro and coworking leader, Cat…
