EDUCAUSE Live!

As international culture and commerce become increasingly reliant on visual communications, visual literacy has developed into an essential skill for 21st-century college graduates. With advancements in technology and the digitizing of information, digital literacy has also grown in importance. Digital visual literacy (DVL) is the ability to critically analyze digital visual materials, create effective visual communications, and make judgments and decisions using visual representations of thoughts and ideas. These skills, which actively engage our cognitive processing of visual images, have evolved from concepts at the intersection of a range of established disciplines. This session will discuss this exciting new literacy, showcase the free materials developed under a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education grant, and share recent feedback from instructors who have integrated these pioneering instructional modules into their courses. The discussion will benefit faculty, staff, and administrators infusing their curriculum with fresh IT skills.

Today in many circles the mention of knowledge management conjures up fears of complex IT systems (often equated with failure) or a new initiative (often associated with vague requirements). How do you develop a knowledge management program that incorporates the essence of organizational learning and knowledge sharing without new tools or systems? The Johnson Space Center has embarked on such a quest to define a program that leverages the wealth of knowledge of 50 years of human space flight not only for today's workforce but also for generations to come.

The challenge of web accessibility raises issues of both policy and technology. This session features experts in each of these two areas.

Policy guru Tracy Mitrano says: "Developing a web accessibility policy has been one of the greatest but most rewarding challenges I have faced in creating an IT policy framework at Cornell. With the EDUCAUSE Live! audience, I would like to share some of the struggles and stories about that process and what accessibility, education, and the web have come to mean to me as a result."

Technology expert Harry Hochheiser summarizes: "Although the need for accessible web sites is widely accepted, many developers are still uncertain about the costs and limitations associated with designs that account for users with varying skills, capabilities, and computing tools. Fortunately, these problems are solvable: with proper planning and design, web sites can be interactive, engaging, highly functional, and accessible. The combination of accessibility guidelines and automated evaluation tools can help any developer build sites that are more accessible and usable for all users."

Many academic digital collection projects are focused on special collections and college archives. Such projects seek to bring collections "out of the basement" and enable greater access to valuable and specialized research materials. However, undergraduate students and faculty often have very different needs and expectations of these digital materials than experienced researchers or the general public.

What does it take to implement a digital asset management system that not only improves access to collections but also allows faculty to integrate digital materials into their teaching? Teaching with digital collections means collection development that is driven by faculty needs, flexible presentation tools, and web interfaces that help students understand visual resources in context. Reed College’s IT and library will share their experiences in implementing a CONTENTdm-based digital image collection for the classics and humanities.

A worldwide tussle over Internet access policy is playing out right now, and many countries are closely watching what the United States does. This talk will provide a brief overview of the U.S. regulatory structure for high-speed Internet access.

Copyright continues to be a core interest of the higher education and academic library communities. This briefing will focus on eight critical legislative and legal arenas where the United States will be working on copyright: orphan works, digital fair use, broadcast flag, Section 1201 anti-circumvention rulemaking, electronic reserves, peer-to-peer file sharing, open access to government-funded research, and the report of the Section 108 Study Group on exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives. The work of the study group will be highlighted, including its primary findings and recommendations. In addition, two important recent studies will be described and their importance for libraries will be cited. The advocacy and educational roles and responsibilities of librarians on copyright also will be outlined.

The copyright legislative process in Washington traditionally focuses on increasing the protection provided to copyrights, based on the assumption that this will strengthen the economy. Recent research, however, indicates that exceptions to copyright protection also promote innovation and are a major catalyst of U.S. economic growth. Specific exceptions to copyright protection under U.S. and international law, generally classified under the broad heading of fair use, are vital to many industries and stimulate growth across the economy. In fact, business enterprises that benefit from fair use generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. gross domestic product. This economic research suggests that future copyright legislation needs to account for these important limitations if the policy-making process is to stimulate growth.

The recording industry’s complaints against alleged music downloaders are just the tip of the iceberg in legal threats against online activity. In the five years of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, we have seen thousands of legal threats, with claims including trademark infringement, defamation, and copyright infringement. This seminar will discuss some of the range of complaints, both unwarranted and justified, and describe ChillingEffects.org’s resources for those trying to evaluate legal threats. In some cases, the web’s sunlight can help to melt meritless threats.

Why is it risky for technologists to ignore the nontechnical context where their systems will be deployed? Furthermore, what is the risk when policymakers ignore the limits and potential of technology? How can we structure dialogue between technologists and policymakers to address security failings—to revisit identity theft, electronic voting machines, digital rights management, and network neutrality? Fred Schneider, editor of the National Research Council study Trust in Cyberspace and longtime researcher on what makes computer systems secure, will consider these and other questions.

Increasingly, moving images are part of students' daily lives. Students record scenes they witness on their pocket digital movie cameras, download clips from free movie sites, and create remixes and mashups. Students recognize something that many libraries don't—that moving images are one of the richest ways of capturing events and that they tell us an immense amount about the history of their time, as well as current culture and styles.