With the recent announcement that the University of Minnesota, along with hundreds of other schools around the country, was moving from in-person to alternative forms of education, Nancy Sims quickly drafted and launched the copyright guide “Rapidly shifting a course online.” Sims is the Libraries’ Copyright Program Librarian, whose work is informed by her training as a lawyer.

Sims’s copyright guidance page was adapted and adopted by many schools across the nation. It also caught the attention of the American Libraries Association, whose writer included Sims in their online story “Fair Use 101: Librarians’ Advice for Educators.”

In the story, Sims says: “Libraries have a big role to play both in advocating for the public interest related to copyright, and in being more closely connected to members of the public on a day-to-day basis than lots of the other folks who work on copyright issues.”

Our U of M instructors are very lucky to have a national leader here to guide them. Thank you for your guidance and advocacy, Nancy!

—Kate McCready
Interim Associate University Librarian
Content & Collections
University of Minnesota Libraries