Authorship and Copyright

When you create a work, you own the copyright. However, if you submit that work for publication typically you agree to give up your copyrights to the publisher. Depending on the wording of the agreement you sign with the publisher, you may not have the right to:

• post your work on your personal website,
• archive your work in a repository,
• or (if you're a teacher) distribute multiple copies of it to your classes over multiple semesters.

If you plan to submit an article to a scholarly journal, then it's a good idea to find out what rights that journal allows authors to retain. SHERPA RoMEO is a website that "aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world." It contains information on over 2000 journals, and classifies them based on how restrictive they are on author rights. 

SHERPA RoMEO's classification system. Green is most lenient, and white is most restrictive. 

One option an author has to retain some rights is to negotiate with the publisher. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is an international organization that "works to enable the open sharing or research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge." SPARC encourages authors to add the SPARC Addendum to any contract they sign with a publisher. This addendum allows the author to retain some of their copyrights. 

If you have questions about copyright, then you should check out the library's copyright information web page or email your question to mylibrary@tarleton.edu. 

Four Recent Award Winners by African American Authors

At the recent announcement of the annual Youth Media Awards by the American Library Association (ALA), four books by African American authors won multiple awards during this African American History Month.  All of the books were honored by ALA's Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) with a Coretta Scott King (CSK) Author Book Award or Honor designation, given each year to African American authors of books for children and young adults that "demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values."

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, was an CSK Author Honor Book.  In addition, it also won the William C. Morris Debut Award, which honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens, and was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book for excellence in young adult literature.  Its audio version, narrated by actress Bahni Turpin, won the 2018 Odyssey Award as the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.  You can access an e-book version of this book in the Tarleton Libraries' OverDrive collection.  The novel is about a girl named Starr whose two worlds (predominantly-white prep school by day, low-income black neighborhood by night) collide when she witnesses the death of her unarmed friend by a police officer.

Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds, was a CSK Author Honor Book, a Printz Honor Book, and an Odyssey Honor Book, for the author's own narration in the audio format.  In addition, the novel was named a John Newbery Honor Book as a distinguished contribution to American literature for children.  Written in free verse, the book is the story of a 60-second elevator ride that changes the life of 15-year-old Will as he encounters people from his past when seeking to avenge the shooting death of his brother.  This book is being acquired for the Dick Smith Library Curriculum Collection on the lower level.

Crown:  An Ode to the Fresh Cut, written by Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Gordon C. James, received a Coretta Scott King honor in both the author and illustrator categories, and named a Newbery Honor Book.  It was also chosen as a Randolph Caldecott Honor Book for the artists of the most distinguished American picture books for children, for Gordon James' impressionistic oil illustrations.  This picture book is about an African American boy's visit to the barber shop.  This book is also being acquired for the Dick Smith Library Curriculum Collection on the lower level.

Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson, won the Coretta Scott King Author Book Award and was also a Newbery Honor Book.  The book is also on the 2018 Lone Star Reading List created by the Texas Library Association, with recreational reading recommendations for students in middle school, grades six, seven, and eight.  The novel is a coming-of-age tale about Jade, an artistic black teenage girl.  This book is also being acquired for the Dick Smith Library Curriculum Collection on the lower level.

African-American Authors Win Library Association Awards

Jacqueline Woodson,
2012 Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers' Literature
[24 Aug 2012] / Tulsa City-County Library /
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The American Library Association (ALA) announced its annual Youth Media Awards on Monday, February 12, 2018, appropriately enough in Library Lovers Week!  And, fittingly for African American History Month, the three awards given to individuals for their body of work (and not a specific title) went to African American female authors.

Administered by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of ALA, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was first given to that author in 1954. The medal in bronze "honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children over the years." The award is presented every two years.

The 2018 winner is Jacqueline Woodson, who has written picture books, young adult novels, and a memoir in poetry, many of which have won other awards.

We have 15 titles by Jacqueline Woodson in Tarleton Libraries collections in Stephenville and Fort Worth and in our OverDrive e-book collection.

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Eloise Greenfield, cropped from
  Hands on theFreedom Plow Book Talk
 [5 Oct 2010] / teachingforchange / CC BY-NC 2.0

Angela Johnson was named the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, which "honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature."

The annual award, established in 1988, is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of ALA, and is sponsored by School Library Journal magazine. It recognizes an author's work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world. 

We have 11 books by Angela Johnson in the Curriculum Collection on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library.

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Eloise Greenfield won the 2018 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in memory of children’s author Virginia Hamilton.  It is presented in even years to an African American author, illustrator or author/illustrator for a body of his or her published books for children and/or young adults, and who has made a significant and lasting literary contribution.  The award is sponsored by ALA's Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT), and the winner gets a medal and a check for $1,500.

We have 11 books that Greenfield authored or co-authored in the Dick Smith Library, ten children's books on the lower level, and a memoir in the stacks on the upper level.  

Who is your favorite author?

The library is investigating adding some pleasure reading materials into our collection.   We need your help to identify which genres you like to read and which authors to collect.   Have a favorite?  Please share!

Here is just a FEW of the categories we need your opinion on:

• Fiction  
  
• Nonfiction
• Biography & Autobiography
• History
• Mysteries
• Mythology
• Romance
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Self-Improvement
• Suspense
• Young Adult

Robert Louis Stevenson

Today is Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday. The library has lots of stuff by and about him. Here's a small selection:

• Treasure Island (we also have an audiobook version, and an e-book version)
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Kidnapped
• Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson edited by Ernest Mehew
• Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson: Travel, Narrative, and the Colonial Body by Oliver S. Buckton

Try this link for more, or try searching Discovery if you'd like to search both the library's catalog and most of the library's online databases.

If you'd like to read some of Stevenson's works but prefer downloadable e-books, check out Project Gutenberg. Librivox has free downloadable audiobooks, read by volunteers.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Children's Books Writers

As I was searching Top-ten-list.org, I found a list of the top ten children’s books writers. I noticed that several students have been checking out children’s literature for class projects so I thought this would be an interesting blog post to share. The library actually has items from all of the authors mentioned; just click on their name and the link will take you to their items in the library catalog!

According to the Top-ten-list.org website, the following authors are the top ten children’s books writers:

1. Kevin Henkes
2. Patricia Polacco
3. Eric Carle
4. Beatrix Potter
5. E.B. White
6. Margaret Wise Brown
7. Maurice Sendak
8. Shel Silverstein
9. Dr. Seuss
10. Chris Van Allsburg

Top Ten Tuesday - 10 Most Powerful Women Authors

Forbes published a list of the ten most powerful women authors based on their "ability to influence us through their words and ideas. Collectively, these women hold readers captivated with stories of fantastical worlds, suspense and drama, insights into the complexities of minority experiences and cultures, and fresh takes on societal issues and expectations…"   It does not hurt that these women have sold a lot of books as well - over one billion copies!   I have listed the authors here with a link to their titles the library owns - in case you want to read their work.

• J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter series
• Danielle Steel - romance and drama
• Toni Morrison - Nobel and Pulitzer-Prize winning author
• Stephenie Meyer - Twilight series
• Mary Higgins Clark -  suspense novels
• Maya Angelou - America’s most visible black female autobiographer/poet
• Alice Walker -  Pulitzer Prize winning novelists and poet who explores themes of race and gender
• Jhumpa Lahiri - Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction
• Joyce Carol Oates - themes of gender, violence, race, and the human condition
• Isabel Allende - widely read Spanish-language novelist

Agree or disagree with the list? Post a comment and share your opinion!