You should have a metadata record. If you only have a file such as PDF, but no metadata record, web search to find the metadata record. If you have a metadata record but not a file, use the metadata record to open the file if possible.
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- City, state, and county publications are not U.S. Federal Government publications. Items published by the United States government or written by employees of the United States government are U.S. Federal publications.
- Examples of U.S. federal government publications:
- Federal government employees can be identified by the agency the author works for, or .gov in the author's email address.
- Federal government agencies often have U.S. or national in their name, e.g. U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). They can also be identified by a .gov URL (see exceptions below). Sometimes, you simply have to know that it's a federal government agency, e.g. Smithsonian Institution, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- Some common government agencies that we encounter are:
- NOAA
- The National Weather Service
- NASA Goddard Flight Center
- If you're not sure if a publisher is a U.S. federal government agency, google and look for the .gov in the URL. If the .gov is in the URL, it's a U.S. federal government agency.
- The U.S. government is not the publisher of works on ERIC, eric.edu.gov, (works on education), Medline/PubMed, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ (medical works), and the NASA Technical Report Server, https://www.sti.nasa.gov/ (NASA Publications and NASA employee publications), except for works on the NASA Technical Report Server where another publisher isn't given in the record for the item.
- If the publisher is the United States Government or an agency of the federal government, or if an author is an employee of the U.S. Federal Government and did the work as part of their official job duties, the work can be added on a Creative Commons Public Domain license. Note "Fed Gov Doc" on the print-out, and skip to "Determine which collections to add an item to."
- When filling in the spreadsheet, U.S. federal government publications get one of these rights notes. Choose the appropriate one: “This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.” If the work is published by the U.S. Government, "This is a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law." In either case, put on a public domain creative commons license.
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- The determination of whether an item is free is based on whether the publisher is making the item available for free or if the U.S. government is making an item available for free. There may be free versions posted elsewhere, but if an item is not free on the publisher's site, or in a U.S. government database, it's not free.
- When working at home, any item you can access on the publisher's site or in a database without using the proxy server is free.
- Items available for free in the U.S. government database, ERIC, eric.edu.gov, (works on education), Medline/PubMed, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ (medical works), and the NASA Technical Report Server, https://www.sti.nasa.gov/ (NASA Publications and NASA employee publications), are free. Sometimes articles in these databases are free, and sometimes they're not free, so you have to figure this out. A pubmed record may have a link icon that says free or an attached pdf. When unsure if an item is free or not, simply try the links to find out.
- When working in the library, materials in databases that UMBC subscribes to may appear free when they are not. These are paywall protected pages where anyone accessing via UMBC IP ranges automatically is given access. Generally if there is a UMBC logo or mention of UMBC on the page, it's a subscription resource that is paywall protected. A list of UMBC paywall protected subscription resources that appear free is here: Vendors/Platforms that are Paywall Protected (this list is likely not complete–if come across something that needs to be added to it, let Michelle know). Individual items on paywall protected sites are free if the record explicitly states that the item is open access, available for free, or is on a Creative Commons license. Science Direct is a subscription database and not free, even though UMBC isn't mentioned on it, unless the record says it's Under an Elsevier user license, or Open Access, in which case that particular item is free. If Open Access, check for a Creative Commons license or terms.
- If an item is free on the publisher's site or in a U.S. government database, write "free" next to it.
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