This document is part of a series of white papers on various copyright issues. One statute, 17 USC § 109, provides a number of exceptions specifically for libraries. In addition to fair use, there are a variety of other exceptions built into the copyright law that don’t get as much attention.This paper argues that as there is no digital first sale, libraries can continue to use 17 USC ​§ ​109 for physical collections and are safe to lend the books they own without worrying about copyright problems.

This article describes how measures of need, participation, satisfaction, and impact are employed to assess many aspects of a professional development program in a large academic library.

This document is part of a series of white papers on various copyright issues. This white paper discusses the copyright status of databases and addresses how the US and European copyright applies to these kinds of works.

Abstract: In this article we present a distressing near-death experience (NDE) that a 23-year-old Iranian Shi'ite Muslim man described having experienced five years previously, during coma following a serious car accident. Given that very few Muslims, especially Iranians, have reported NDEs, one of our aims in presenting this case was to begin to fill this void in the near-death studies literature. We provide extensive quotations from our 40-minute interview with this experiencer, in which he describes the NDE itself as well as aftereffects of it, including experiences of disclosing it to others. We conclude with a discussion about the relationship between his NDE and Islamic beliefs as well as what his case can offer regarding an understanding of the role of culture in NDEs.

Abstract: A host of literature accumulated over the past 40 years attests to the powerfully transformative nature of near-death experiences (NDEs) through a consistently reported pattern of aftereffects. Many of the qualitative and quantitative studies of post-NDE changes have been conducted in the United States and in Western European nations. Although examining the cultural diversity of NDEs was recently highlighted as a research priority, no researchers to date have examined how near-death experiencers (NDErs) from Aotearoa New Zealand describe any changes they experience after their NDEs, whether these descriptions are similar to those in previous research with samples from other Western nations, and, if not, whether culturally-specific explanations might account for those cross-cultural differences. In this exploratory study, our aim was to examine these questions. Participants were 28 individuals who self-identified as NDErs. Four participants were interviewed about their NDEs, whereas a further 24 provided written accounts. All 28 accounts were thematically analyzed, with findings overall indicating that many of the NDE aftereffects reported in previous literature were also evident in our sample. In cases in which participants did not describe typical aftereffects identified in previous literature, possibly culturally specific explanations are provided.

This document is part of a series of white papers on various copyright issues. This section revisit the current e-course reserves policy, which allows faculty members to make some readings available for electronic reserve. It uses the case from the 11th Circuit which may clarify how schools can use electronic course reserves.

This article presents an overview of the End of Term 2016 Presidential Web Archive conducted at the end of the second Obama presidential term. It presents the workflow for this collaborative project as well as lessons learned.

Information technology continues to evolve, libraries may not always wait on vendors or third parties to provide solutions for their diverse local needs.This article discusses the need for libraries to develop in-house Software and based on the University of North Texas Libraries experiences, it provides key considerations for the successful implementation.

This article describes how the 3Dhotbed project (an acronym for “3D Printed History of the Book Education”) harnesses maker culture to advance book history instruction by providing open-access 3D data through a digital library platform.

This document is part of a series of white papers on various copyright issues. Fair use is a powerful tool for people who want to use and expand on copyrighted works. Fair use is special among the other copyright exceptions because it isn’t specifically targeted at one kind of use. Instead, fair use is purposely open ended to permit many different kinds of uses. One downside of this however, is that it can be difficult for anyone — lawyer and nonlawyer alike — to figure what is/isn’t fair use under the law. This white paper attempts to review the fair use statute, go over its famous “four factor test,” and offers some suggestions about how to think through each part.

This article studies the marketing practices of predatory journals through the analysis of a a subset of the 1,816 e-mails received by a single university biology faculty member during a 24-month period.

This document is part of a series of white papers on various copyright issues. A copyright license is a contract to use a work in certain limited ways. Because copyright grants authors a “bundle of rights” over their works, rights holders can choose how other people can use any or all of those 11 rights without giving away their entire copyrights. They use licenses to do this. This section will address several ways that licensing is unique for music copyright and introduce four licenses that are common in this space.

Abstract: A comparative survey of how near-death experiences (NDEs) intersected with afterlife myths and shamanic practices, as reported in the mid-19th to mid-20th century by missionaries, explorers, and ethnographers of Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Australia, reveals various culturally distinct patterns. In Polynesia and Melanesia, documentary accounts of NDEs are found alongside myths and beliefs that directly refer to the phenomenon. In contrast, in Australia and Micronesia NDEs are almost entirely absent, and afterlife journey myths instead typically have shamanic contexts. I argue that these dynamics can be explained by reference to certain religious and cultural particularities, including differences in burial practices, variations in attitudes towards the dead, and diversity of shamanic traditions.

Abstract: The objective of this study was to explore the states of consciousness associated with various features of near-death experience (NDE). The sample comprised 23 Norwegian adult survivors of unconsciousness associated with life threatening medical conditions, either cardiac arrest (CA; n=19) or surgery to address another type of trauma (OT; n=4). Of these, 11 CA and 4 OT patients endorsed at least one item on the Near-Death Experience Scale--Norwegian translation. We individually interviewed each of the 23 patients to ascertain their perception of the phase of unconsciousness in which each endorsed item on the NDE Scale occurred. Although most features reportedly occurred during unconsciousness, at least one item was endorsed for four other phases related to unconsciousness: before, while awakening from, after (conscious), and after (asleep/dream). Our results indicate that healthcare providers need to be prepared that ND experiencers may report clinically significant NDE features during both unconsciousness itself and that more research into this topic is warranted.

This article describes the Preservation of Electronic Government Information Project, a two-year initiative aimed at addressing national concerns around the collection and preservation of born-digital government information by cultural memory organizations for long-term public use.

Abstract: We describe results of a qualitative study investigating spontaneous mediumship experiences (SMEs) of near-death experiencers (NDErs). Using archival data from a prior survey (Holden, Foster & Kinsey, 2014), we used cross-comparison qualitative analysis to examine emerged themes of participants' descriptions of SME characteristics, challenges of SMEs, and strategies to cope with SMEs. We identified 19 themes across 3 research questions. We discuss implications, including our urge to NDE researchers to continue investigating SMEs among NDErs to provide deeper clarity and understanding of this NDE aftereffect.

This article discusses a session on "Fake News and the Fate of Our Democracy" at the 2018 Texas Association of School Boards Summer Leadership Institute, and provides information on resources and strategies for assessing the legitimacy of news information.