Defining Terms

Before we delve into the details of building OER, we should look at some terminology that will help you navigate your options.

Curating

Sometimes building OER will be referred to as curating. Think of curating in the context of a museum curator. A curator carefully selects pieces to include in an exhibit that go together in some way to form an entire exhibit. Curating OER means you are collecting separate pieces to create a cohesive whole. You may or may not modify these pieces.

Creating

Where as curating involves using existing pieces, creating usually refers to making something completely new, such as writing your own textbook.

Sometimes all these terms are used interchangeably but as you will see below there are some important distinctions.

Adaptations / Remixes vs. Collections

Because of the ND license restriction it is important to know the difference between adapting something and collecting something.

An adaptation is a work based on one or more pre-existing works. What constitutes an adaptation depends on applicable law, however translating a work from one language to another or creating a film version of a novel are generally considered adaptations.

In contrast to an adaptation or remix, a collection involves the assembly of separate and independent creative works into a collective whole. A collection is not an adaptation. One CC community member likened the difference between adaptations and collections to smoothies and TV dinners, respectively.

Like a smoothie, an adaptation/ remix mixes material from different sources to create a wholly new creation:

In a “smoothie” or adaptation / remix, you often cannot tell where one open work ends and another one begins. While this flexibility is useful for the new creator, it is still important to provide attribution to the individual parts that went into making the adaptation.

An example of an education adaptation would be an open textbook chapter that wove together multiple open educational resources in such a way where the reader can’t tell which resource was used on which page. That said, the endnotes of the book chapter should still provide attribution to all of the sources that were remixed in the chapter.

Like a TV dinner, a collection compiles different works together while keeping them organized as distinct separate objects.

When you create a collection, the copyrights in the individual works remain intact with the creators of those works. It is your job to make clear to reusers of the collection that the works you have aggregated may be separately licensed, and to provide attribution information about those works. This gives the public the information they need to understand who created what and which license terms apply to specific content.

When you combine material into a collection, you may have a separate copyright of your own that you may license. However, your copyright only extends to the new contributions you made to the work. In a collection, that is the selection and arrangement of the various works in the collection, and not the individual works themselves. For example, you can select and arrange pre-existing poems published by others into an anthology, write an introduction, and design a cover for the collection, but your copyright and the only copyright you can license extends to your arrangement of the poems (not the poems themselves), and your original introduction and cover. The poems are not yours to license.

Attributions:

“CC Smoothie” by Nate Angell. CC BY. Derivative of “Strawberry Smoothie On Glass Jar” by Element5  in the public domain, and various Creative Commons license buttons by Creative Commons used under CC BY 

“CC TV Dinner” by Nate Angell. CC BY  Derivative of “tv dinner 1 ″ by adrigu  used under CC BY, and various Creative Commons license buttons by Creative Commons  used under CC BY .

Frequently Asked Questions, What Is an Adaption, Creative Commons,  licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license 

4.4, Remixing CC-licensed Work ,  Creative Commons Certificate for Librarians, Creative Commons offered under a CC Attribution