Addressing Copyright Anxiety: A Light-hearted, Practical Approach to Copyright Instruction

Abstract

This presentation was delivered at the Virginia Scholarly Communication Interest Group, Summer 2025 at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

Some faculty, students, and let’s be honest some of us experience anxiety and in-action when encountering copyright and open-licensing questions. Copyright anxiety and resulting inaction, or “Copyright chill”, affect creation of new works and sharing and reuse of original creative works. (Wakaruk et al, 2021). Building confidence in introductory-level copyright knowledge, analysis strategies, and informed actions is one solution for empowering scholars to navigate copyright questions. Inspired by the Icepops conference 2021 hosted online by the UK Copyright Literacy and Information Literacy Group, this presentation provides an overview of a light-hearted, interactive, practical, principles-based copyright instruction approach, also published as chapters 4 & 5 in Making Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education (Walz & Farley, 2023) and already modified for use with a variety of audiences.

References: IcePops [n.d.] International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars. https://copyrightliteracy.org/upcoming-events/icepops-international-copyright-literacy-event-with-playful-opportunities-for-practitioners-and-scholars Wakaruk, A., Gareau-Brennan, C., & Pietrosanu, M. (2021). Introducing the Copyright Anxiety Scale. Journal of Copyright in Education & Librarianship, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v5i1.15212 Walz, A. R., and Farley, J. P. (2023). Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.21061/OER_PreK12_highered