Michael Sauers, who has the wonderful title of "Technology Innovation Librarian" and blogs for the Nebraska Library Commission, has started cataloging and offering Creative Commons-licensed works at his library.  What he did was to take electronic versions of CC titles, post them on his library's Web server, catalog them in the OPAC, and make them available to the public. Additionally, for titles whose license allows for physical printing of the works, they turned the electronic books into spiral-bound books to be added to the physical collection.  The result, so far, is that his library now has a collection of 9 CC-licensed electronic titles available through the OPAC along with 7 print versions available to circulate.   Also, seven of the nine titles resulted in brand new records in OCLC.  Corey Doctorow, one of the authors, has blogged about the project over at BoingBoing.

Today Creative Commons -- a non-profit organization founded by Laurence Lessig devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others through copyright reform and the Creative Commons license -- announced ccLearn, a new division devoted to promoting the use of freely copyable materials for classrooms and education. The idea is that in order for Web technologies to truly have a revolutionary impact on education, there needs to be the development of "open educational resources (OER), which in their fullest form should be free, accessible, authoritative, and derivable." Makes perfect sense, no?

Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

• With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.
• With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.
• With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

[Thanks BoingBoing!]