New Exhibit: Frontier Fiesta

A new exhibit at the University of Houston Libraries highlights Frontier Fiesta.

A UH tradition, Frontier Fiesta began in 1940 as a mishmash of musical and theatrical performances, cook-offs, carnival booths, and concessions. Held in the spring, Fiesta volunteers transform a piece of land on campus into a western frontier-style town called Fiesta City.

The first two Fiestas, held in 1940 and 1941, were interrupted by World War II and suspended from 1942 to 1945. Reestablished in 1946, it ran until 1959. The festival was reinstated again for its third run in 1992 and continues today. The early Fiestas raised money to address campus needs, such as a student recreation center or swimming pool. For most of its duration, and to date, proceeds from the festival have funded scholarships for entering freshman and current students.

In the early 1950s, Life magazine proclaimed Fiesta the “Greatest College Show on Earth.” And during its second run, the event grew to its greatest popularity. During its heyday, Frontier Fiesta attracted as many as 100,000 people to the UH campus, including celebrities and visitors from all over the nation, including Ed Sullivan, Kenny Rogers, and Humphrey Bogart, to name a few.

The exhibit includes programs, photographs, and other materials documenting the three runs of what once was known as the greatest college show on earth, and will run March 21 – March 28, 2016 in the MD Anderson Library on the second floor in front of Special Collections.

For more information, contact Mary Manning.

Copyright Research Guide

The following is a guest post by Jeannie Castro, electronic resources coordinator at the University of Houston Libraries. This week, we’ll feature posts by members of the UH Libraries Copyright Team highlighting Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2016.

The University of Houston Libraries Copyright Team has put together a Copyright Research Guide to consolidate some fantastic resources available to help you determine if your use of material is “fair.”

We have broken down our Research Guide to anticipate the needs of librarians, researchers, graduate students and instructors. The Copyright Research Guide is available so you can try to make your own determination and to learn more about copyright. However, if you are not sure where to start, the Copyright Team will use these tools to help guide your discovery process.

Thanks for celebrating Fair Use Week with the UH Libraries Copyright Team!

Fair Use vs. Public Domain

The following is a guest post by Nora Dethloff, assistant head of Information and Access Services, and Stephanie Lewin-Lane, coordinator of the Music Library, at the University of Houston Libraries. This week, we’ll feature posts by members of the UH Libraries Copyright Team highlighting Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2016.

What’s the difference between fair use and the public domain? Put simply, works in the public domain are those works not protected by copyright. This includes works that have aged out of copyright protection or those that never qualified for it. You can check to see if a work has entered the public domain using the Public Domain Slider.

In contrast, fair use allows us to use material still protected by copyright, but in limited ways. Fair use helps to safeguard our first amendment rights by allowing parody, reporting, criticism, scholarship, and other uses that involve limited portions of a copyrighted work.

Find more about fair use and the public domain at our Copyright Research Guide.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The following is a guest post by Ashley Lierman, instructional design librarian at the University of Houston Libraries. This week, we’ll feature posts by members of the UH Libraries Copyright Team highlighting Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2016.

Ideally, copyright law exists to protect the rights of both copyright-holders and users of materials. In recent years, however, the balance of power seems to have shifted more towards wealthy corporate rights-holders, and away from individual users.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to defending civil liberties around software and the internet, is one organization that has been pushing back. Among other activities, the EFF tracks current fair use legal cases and their outcomes, and makes brief overviews available to the public on their blog.

Three Famous Fair Use Cases

The following is a guest post by Julie Grob, coordinator for instruction in Special Collections at the University of Houston Libraries. This week, we’ll feature posts by members of the UH Libraries Copyright Team highlighting Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2016. 

What do the rap group 2 Live Crew, kitschy artist Jeff Koons, and pop punk band Green Day have in common? They have all been at the center of legal cases in which their use of an image or a piece of music by another artist was ultimately ruled to be fair use.

In 2 Live Crew’s case, they borrowed the familiar lyrics and bassline from Roy Orbison’s song “Pretty Woman” for their satiric song “Pretty Woman.” Koons incorporated a fashion photo of a woman’s feet clad in sandals in his painting “Niagara.” And Green Day modified a piece of street art by Dereck Seltzer for a video that played onstage during concerts on their 2009-10 tour. In each case, the court ruled in favor of the repurposing creators.

Welcome to Fair Use Week 2016!

The following is a guest post by Nora Dethloff, assistant head of Information and Access Services at the University of Houston Libraries. This week, we’ll feature posts by members of the UH Libraries Copyright Team highlighting Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2016.

Fair Use Week is an annual celebration of the fair use doctrine – part of the US Copyright Law that provides limitations on a copyright owner’s exclusive rights, and by far the most flexible and empowering part of copyright law. It may also be the most misunderstood.

As a librarian and a copyright geek, I often get asked whether using something in a particular way falls under “fair use.” Most of the time, the questioner comes to me with hope in their eyes and ends their short explanation with “that’s fair use, right?” Here’s where I almost always disappoint – not by telling them no (or, at least, not usually), but rather by launching into an overly long and detailed discussion of the four factors and transformative uses. (Never, ever, expect a short answer from a librarian and copyright geek.) With fair use, there’s almost never a quick answer.

And we wouldn’t want it any other way. If the rules for using copyrighted material were totally clear-cut and proscriptive, they would become much less flexible, and would never take into account changes in technology or culture. With fair use, a little investment in time and analysis can allow us to find a way to use material to meet our needs while still respecting the creator’s rights. (Like this, for example.) Fair use allows us to be creative, analyze works, create commentary, share knowledge, and use new technologies. It’s not clear cut, it’s not quick and easy, but it’s flexible, and it’s very powerful.

So, where to go for some help in getting a good answer to the “is it fair” question? My favorite tool is the Fair Use Evaluator from the Copyright Advisory Network. This tool walks you through an analysis of the factors of fair use, and at the end creates a printable record for you. Other great tools can be found on our Copyright Research Guide. And, watch for a new post every day this week from a member of the UH Libraries Copyright Team. Happy Fair Use Week!

Longtime UH Librarian Establishes Endowment

Jack Hall, cataloging librarian at the University of Houston Libraries, has established an endowment supporting international travel for UH librarians.

The endowment will provide assistance to UH librarians for expenses associated with international travel. Librarians are increasingly pursuing professional development and scholarly activities on a global scale, attending conferences and sharing expertise on a number of topics in information science.

Hall has been a UH librarian since 1976, primarily in cataloging. He was also a reference librarian, and the subject librarian for English and linguistics for nearly 20 years. He was inspired to establish the international travel endowment based on his own experiences as a scholar and librarian.

“After studying and teaching linguistics and Germanic languages for several years, I decided to transfer my academic interests to librarianship,” Hall said. “I was active in the American Library Association, attending conferences and serving on and chairing a number of committees and interest groups.”

Hall spent two years studying abroad in Germany, 1964-1965, on a Fulbright Fellowship, and 1967-1968, on a Danforth Fellowship. He has always felt that these experiences have been fundamental to his academic and intellectual life and work as a librarian. He strongly encourages work and experience abroad as an extension of any librarian’s career.

Hall dates his interest in librarianship as far back as his childhood when he regularly used the county-library-supplied Bookmobile in his small home town of Damascus, Virginia, which had no library. The librarian who accompanied the Bookmobile recognized Hall’s maturity and interest in books and began recommending materials more advanced than a child might have otherwise encountered, greatly facilitating his education and intellectual development.

Hall is a Phi Beta Kappa cum laude graduate of Davidson College (1964) and has master’s degrees in Linguistics from Princeton University (1967) and in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh (1976). He was a member of the University of Virginia German Department and Linguistics Program faculty from 1970 to 1973. Hall joined the UH Libraries as a cataloging librarian on October 15, 1976.

After retiring in 2013, Hall continued to work part-time as a music cataloger. The length of his career at UH and his eagerness to continue working in the Libraries demonstrate the extent to which he values the Libraries and his colleagues.

Newbery Medal Winner to Visit UH

The University of Houston Libraries is pleased to announce that Newbery Medal winner Matt de la Peña will visit the University on March 28.

De la Peña, the New York Times bestselling author of six young adult novels and two critically-acclaimed picture books, will be featured in two speaking events on campus. He will discuss the transformative power of literature at the MD Anderson Library Rockwell Pavilion, and will also lead a craft talk and Q&A in Farish Hall Kiva Room. Both talks will be followed by a book sale, and are free and open to the public. Students are especially encouraged to attend. RSVP here.

De la Peña is the author of Ball Don’t Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, I Will Save You, The Living and The Hunted, and the picture book, A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis (illustrated by Kadir Nelson). His 2015 picture book, Last Stop on Market Street (illustrated by Christian Robinson), the story of a young boy riding the city bus with his grandmother, was awarded the 2016 Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature. Last Stop was also named as a 2016 Caldecott Honor Book and a 2016 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book.

De la Peña received his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and his BA from the University of the Pacific, where he attended school on a full basketball scholarship. He teaches creative writing and visits high schools and colleges throughout the country.

The event is sponsored by the UH Office of the Provost, the UH Libraries, the UH College of Education, and the UH Creative Writing Program.

Matt de la Peña Visit to UH
Monday, March 28, 2016

Transformative Power of Literature Presentation
MD Anderson Library Rockwell Pavilion
11:30 am

Craft Talk and Q&A
Farish Hall Kiva Room
3:00 pm

Parking is available in the Welcome Center parking garage (across the street from the UH Hilton Hotel).

New Student Art on Display

Talha Kabasakal, a second-year student in industrial design at the University of Houston, is pursuing his goal of becoming a car designer. Long obsessed with cars, he has been sketching them since childhood. “I believe that if one puts an effort into what they are passionate about, they will eventually achieve it no matter what it takes,” Kabasakal said. “I believe that challenges train me better for my future.”

Kabasakal’s artwork is currently on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library A² Alcove, a venue that is part gallery and part lounge. The library supports UH student artists by hosting exhibitions of their work throughout the year. All displayed works are digitally documented and included in the UH Digital Library.

Kabasakal’s exhibition, The Shortest Distance, is a series of ink-on-paper works that depict the artist’s life and expectations, referencing his love of cars, his preferred color red, and his native Turkey. In one particular piece, Kabasakal has played upon the notion of a personal geographic dichotomy by juxtaposing two places, two different countries – the familiar and the foreign, the old and the new, the past and the future. Though each occupies discrete areas, isolated at opposite sides of the composition, the two are connected by a bridge. Kabasakal believes that there should always be a bridge, a connection, representing hope, remembrance, love.

The UH community is invited to visit the Architecture and Art Library for a look at The Shortest Distance, now on display.

Student artists interested in displaying work at the Architecture and Art Library are encouraged to contact Chris Conway with digital samples.

Malone Awarded IFLA Fellowship Grant

Andrea Malone, librarian of modern and classical languages, and ethnic studies at the University of Houston Libraries, has been selected for an International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) 2016 National Committee Fellowship Grant.

The fellowship grant supports expenses to attend the 82nd IFLA World Library and Information Congress, to be held in Columbus, Ohio from August 13 – 19, 2016.

The IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.