Welcome!

The St. Kate's chapter of the student movement Students for Free Culture is now a registered organization with the College of St. Catherine and also with the student organization, Students for Free Culture!

Why should I be interested in this group?

Well, if you are in the MLIS program at St Kate's the importance
and impact of copyright legislation and enaction has no doubt
been made clear in multiple syllabi in various courses.

Libraries function due to a *restriction* to copyright, the First Sale Doctrine, which allows libraries to lend copies of books that they have lawfully purchased. So, any changes to restrictions and enaction or interpretations of copyright law, eventually effect libraries.

As librarians it is in our code of ethics to care about intellectual freedom.

The student movement Free Culture is an excellent way to educate yourself about
intellectual freedom, learn about interesting open source and open access initiatives that you can provide to future or current patrons and ways to enrich the public domain and library collections with these resources. Also, copyright is confusing, but it is also incredibly fascinating. It has a rich and long history. Learn about it and figure out what your copyright ideology is.

Christina Buckles, and I, Laura Clark, have started this group, which is the first Free Culture student group in all Minnesota!

We are in the early stages of planning events, resources and ways to communicate the goals of the Free Culture Movement and would love any and all ideas and input.

This blog will be a temporary go-to website for our organization. I am working with another member, Emily Kittelson, on creating a *real* website, designed to provide resources on Free Culture, give some information on the movement and copyright, and highlight particularly passionate advocates of the movement, who I like to call Free Culture Iconoclasts (see the List).

Get involved! We will probably meet every month, or every other month, so it is not a huge time commitment and we promise to keep it interesting and informative!

Want to Join? Questions?

Email us:
Laura Clark: laclark@stkate.edu
Christina Buckles: cmbuckles@stkate.edu