In 2008, MLibrary made the content on its Web site available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC) license, rendering it freely usable by anyone (excluding third party content) who made proper attributions and citations, as long as the use was not a commercial endeavor. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to expand the range of creative work available to be shared, adapted, and built upon.

Two years later, MLibrary began to reconsider the commercial restriction on its Creative Commons license. “It seemed that for some people the term ‘noncommercial’ implied ‘anti-commerce.’ That wasn’t the message we wanted to send,” says Melissa Levine, MLibrary’s Lead Copyright Officer. “After some careful consideration, and in consultation with all library personnel, we concluded that dropping the commercial restriction would encourage broader use of our educational resources, which was really our intent when we switched to the Creative Commons license in the first place.” 

So recently MLibrary changed its Web site copyright license to Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY). This license lets others copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt MLibrary Web site content as long as they attribute MLibrary (but not in any way that suggests that MLibrary endorses users or their use of the work). There are exclusions: licensed content, material used by permission or under fair use, staff member profile photographs, and for privacy reasons photographs in which students, staff, or faculty at the University of Michigan are easily identifiable. “These exclusions make practical and legal sense,” says Levine. “We respect the copyrights and privacy of others and freely share what we make.”

Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons, believes MLibrary to be the first major research library to adopt the CC-BY license. “Many other people and projects have dropped the NonCommercial condition from their licenses as they’ve gotten more comfortable with and reaped the benefits of openness, but the U-M Library is the most prominent so far. As other institutions follow, this leadership will be seen as an important marker in the history of increasing access to and collaboration around educational and research materials.”

According to Paul N. Courant, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, the cc-by license change “offers the U-M community and the public a rich set of educational resources free from barriers to their use and repurposing.” Among these resources are bibliographies, research guides, lesson plans, and technology tutorials. Courant continues, “It also demonstrates MLibrary’s ability and willingness to lead the way toward open access in scholarship, on this campus and beyond.”