In another innovative move, the University of Michigan Library has adopted CC licensing for all of its own content. Any work that is produced by the library itself, and to which the University of Michigan holds the copyrights, will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license (CC BY-NC). This allows anyone, including you, to access, adapt, remix, reproduce, and redistribute the library’s works for noncommercial purposes. This is fantastic news for educators, researchers, and students, who often dread the laborious task of obtaining permissions to synthesize diverse works with just as diverse (not to mention tricky) rights attached to them. From their press release:

The University of Michigan Library has decided to adopt Creative Common Attribution-Non-Commercial licenses for all works created by the Library for which the Regents of the University of Michigan hold the copyrights. These works include bibliographies, research guides, lesson plans, and technology tutorials. We believe that the adoption of Creative Commons licenses is perfectly aligned with our mission, “to contribute to the common good by collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge.”

University Librarian Paul Courant said, “Using Creative Commons licenses is another way the University Library can act on its commitment to the public good. By marking our copyrighted content as available for reuse, we offer the University community and the public a rich set of educational resources free from traditional permissions barriers.”

Recall that they also recently installed the Espresso Book Machine, which prints on demand copies of over 2 million public domain books. Now they can add even more works to the mix! What will the Library be up to next? Thanks to Molly Kleinman for alerting us to the good news.