Creative Commons Master Certificate is going to light the global commons. Library communities will have the Creative Commons Certificate for Librarians!

Creative Commons (CC) - a virtual organization with a staff of 20 based internationally in over 85 countries - is planning to build CC Master Certificate defining the full body of knowledge and skills needed to master CC, also within library communities.

Indeed, how might libraries serve 21st century information needs?

Creative Commons’ 2016-2020 strategy is going to support library communities  with  CC Certificate for Librarians as a part of CC Master Certificate.

If you think that is a good idea or want to be part of those sprints, the CC team invites you to express interest by sharing your comments here Creative Commons (CC) Certificate for Librarians.

CC Master Certificate

will be of interest to those who need a broad and deep understanding of all things CC.

With initial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services, CC is focusing on creating a specific CC Certificate for:

1. Librarians
2. Government, and
3. Educators.

The Working Group of CC staff  is reaching out through its networks to form working groups to this target audience in order to ensure the specialized certificates are relevant and appropriately targeted to each group. The CC Certificate for each of these groups will include a subset of learning outcomes from the overall CC Master Certificate along with new learning outcomes specific to each role.

A CC Certificate Librarian Working Group is being formed through coordinated outreach in consultation with organizations like the American Library Association, Digital Public Library of America, and SPARC.

The Working Group of CC  will develop and deliver a certification program for librarians to increase understanding and access to open and public domain materials.

If successful, the Working Group of CC  plans to engage working groups of librarians in multi-day sprint workshops to do everything from co-defining learning outcomes, to identifying existing CC related openly licensed curricula, beta testing curricula, and defining optimal modes of delivery and duration.

If you think that is a good idea or want to be part of those sprints the CC team invites you to express interest by sharing your comments here Creative Commons (CC) Certificate for Librarians.

Providing training around CC and open content

With over 1 billion works licensed using Creative Commons, the pool of CC-licensed content has nearly tripled in last 5 years. Despite this rapid growth, a lack of understanding of open content inhibits its widespread use. 

Librarians are increasingly asked to provide support for CC-licensed and open resources. 

CC’s certificate program is going to provide core training around CC and open content to equip librarians to proactively support students, researchers, and the public in accessing and maximizing the digital commons, including open access, open data, open educational resources, and the public domain.

Certified librarians would be trained and empowered themselves, and would be enabled to serve as experts and advocates in their field, supporting innovation in library science while strengthening democratic principles.

All Certificates will be created as CC licensed Open Educational Resources (OER)

reusing and remixing as many existing openly licensed resources as possible. Open content can benefit low- and moderate-income individuals through affordable access to educational resources, as well as researchers through access to open research and data. 

See: Active OER: Beyond open licensing policies.

Aggregate, adopt, map and adapt engaging the entire open community

The Working Group of CC  is looking to aggregate, adopt, map and adapt existing materials as much as possible and only develop new content for areas where nothing already exists. To that end, the Working Group of CC  aims to have assessments be 100% performance-based, testing people on their ability to use CC in applied and practical ways.

A Working Group of participants from across CC global affiliate network has also been formed to help ensure initial work takes into consideration internationalization and localization. CC is seeking to engage the entire open community in the development of these certificates.

Co-creation with participants will build up a pool of community created CC Certificate content, targeted to learning outcomes, in many different languages, localized to different parts of the world, and curated by Creative Commons.

CC team is currently experimenting with making all the certificate designs available for review and edit through GitHub and other tools.

As CC embarks on its strategy to “foster a vibrant, usable, and collaborative global commons”, Creative Commons certificates will play a critical role in ensuring participation scales in informed and skilled ways.

If you have thoughts, resources, or interest in helping out please contact CC.

Sources:

Help Us Build Creative Commons Certificates – Open Community Call

Creative Commons (CC) Certificate for Librarians