General information
Authors: A.A.Fuente, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain; A.Texeira, L.Morgado, Universidade Aberta, Portugal.
The general goal of this training material is to help teachers create academic materials while complying with the Intellectual Property (IP) laws, with licenses as the main point of interest. The focus is on Creative Commons (CC) licenses, as this licenses are probably the licenses of choice in the academic field.
Unit 1 introduces the main concepts needed to understand IP, including licenses. In Unit 2 we will learn about CC licenses and how to use them.
Unit 3 introduces additional IP concepts, as differences between countries in IP laws reside in these areas and they must be taken into account by the author of academic materials. These regional particularities are treated in Unit 4.
Creators of materials can use resources from others. In Unit 5 we will learn about the different types of resources that can be used, and a specific process to assure compliance with IP law when using these resources by checking the licenses. Unit 6 shows how to search for these resources considering the resource license.
The last unit is devoted to registration, which is usually the last thing done regarding IP when developing academic materials
Unit 6. Searching for resources
6.3. Searching types of resources
General search techniques and tools can be applied to any resource. However, there are also search tools that are specialized in searching each of the types of resources described before.
6.3.1. Searching full OERs
There are specialized search engines for OERs that were already covered elsewhere. Most of these engines have the option to use license information, as it is usually part of the metadata used to upload the OER to the engine.
6.3.2. Searching text
Searching text was the original purpose of generic engines, so it is easy to use generic engines to find text in all places available to these engines: web pages, pdf, and other documents indexed. The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is often one of the results when searching text, which also has a search function.
The content of books can be searched within databases such as Google books or Amazon search inside.
6.3.3. Searching images
Some of the generic and adapted engines that can be used to search for images are Google images and the photograph repository Flickr.
Specialized engines for photographs, graphics, and icons are also available.
6.3.4. Searching sound
Music, talks, and other sources of sound can be found using generic and adapted engines. Youtube can be used to search clips and then take the sound from them. When using Youtube, careful attention should be payed to the license, in order to find the original, real license.
Besides specialized engines for music, there are also search engines for sound effects and interface sounds.
6.3.5. Searching video
As in the case of sound, generic and adapted engines can be used to find video. Youtube is probably the biggest repository for video of all kinds, where care should be put to find the real license for the resource.
As for specialized engines, there are a number of engines for animations clipart.