Curating

Sometimes building OER will be referred to as "curating. "Think of curating in the context of a museum curator. A curator carefully selects pieces to include in an exhibit that go together in some way to form an entire exhibit. Curating OER means you are collecting separate pieces to create a cohesive whole. You may or may not modify these pieces.

Adaptations vs. Curated Collections

Because of the ND license restriction, it is important to know the difference between adapting something and collecting something.

An adaptation is a work based on one or more preexisting works. What constitutes an adaptation depends on applicable law, however translating a work from one language to another or creating a film version of a novel are generally considered adaptations.

In contrast to an adaptation or remix, a collection involves the assembly of separate and independent creative works into a collective whole. A collection is not an adaptation. You can think of the difference adaptations and collections to smoothies and a fruit basket, respectively.

Adaptations / Remixes

Like a smoothie, an adaptation/ remix mixes material from different sources to create a wholly new creation. In a “smoothie” or adaptation / remix, you often cannot tell where one open work ends and another one begins. When licensing your final work, you must select a license that is compatible with all the individual works. Be sure to also provide attribution to the individual parts that went into making the adaptation.

CC Smoothie, described in the text that follows

In the smoothie shown in the image, the individual works have the licenses: CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY, and public domain. The final product must have a license of CC BY-NC-SA. We will discuss why this must be the final license later in the module.

An example of an education adaptation would be an open textbook chapter that weaves together multiple open educational resources in such a way where the reader can’t tell which resource was used on which page. That said, the endnotes of the book chapter should still provide attribution to all of the sources that were remixed in the chapter.

Curated Collections

Compare the smoothie, where fruits are blended together, with a basket of fruit. The fruit basket is a collection because each fruit is clearly distinguishable from the others. Each separate item in the collection can have a different license.

fruit basket with each fruit having a different license and the whole basket being CC BY

In this fruit basket example, the collection has a license of CC BY. It contains works with the licenses: CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND.

Unlike a remix, a collection can have multiple works with licenses incompatible with each other, because the copyrights in the individual works remain intact with the creators of those works. And, unlike remixes, you can include licenses with the ND element because that work is not being adapted, it is being used as-is. It is your job to make clear to reusers of the collection that the works you have aggregated may be separately licensed, and to provide attribution information about those works. This gives the public the information they need to understand who created what and which license terms apply to specific content.

When you combine material into a collection, you may have a separate copyright of your own that you may license. However, your copyright only extends to the new contributions you made to the work. In a collection, that is the selection and arrangement of the various works in the collection, and not the individual works themselves. For example, you can select and arrange preexisting poems published by others into an anthology, write an introduction, and design a cover for the collection, but your copyright and the only copyright you can license extends to your arrangement of the poems (not the poems themselves), and your original introduction and cover. The poems are not yours to license.

Attributions

“CC Smoothie” by Nate Angell. CC BY. Derivative of “Strawberry Smoothie On Glass Jar” by Element5 in the public domain, and various Creative Commons license buttons by Creative Commons used under CC BY.
CC Fruit Basket by Suzanne Wakim licensed CC BY — Derivative of Fruit Basket via Pixabay license.
Frequently Asked Questions, What Is an Adaption, Creative Commons, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
4.4, Remixing CC-licensed Work , Creative Commons Certificate for Librarians, Creative Commons, offered under a CC Attribution.