Open Resources

Background

More and more works in various media are being published or posted under licenses that reserve only some rights to the author/creator. The most common open content license is the Creative Commons license, which gives users the right to use a work based on the level of rights that the author/creator has set when publishing/posting the work. This type of license allows users to copy content without prior permission under the licensing provisions set by the author/creator.

Helpful hint: Following Creative Commons on Twitter @creativecommons can be a good way of finding new sources of works licensed under a Creative Commons license as they often tweet links to such content.

To find out more about Open Access/Open Content sites and how the materials on them can be used, see the NorQuest Library's research guide Open Access/Open Content.

To find out how the licenses work, view this video produced by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand.