These are some notes for instructors only.
Sections
We will be using mostly these new labs for the 2015 summer semester and thereafter always.
Some of them will be a bit rough since they are being written in haste, but I'll be troubleshooting them in real time during the 2015 summer semester.
We are keeping the new labs password-protected and unadvertized.
There are two reasons for the hiddenness of the new labs.
First, we don't want any questions about them from the publisher of Diane's lab manual who owns the copyright of that.
All the new labs will be written by my me and will use figures of my own or figures with permission. No text is coming from the lab manual.
The procedures and ideas for questions, etc. will be much the same as in the lab manual, but procedures and ideas are NOT copyrighted (see Wikipedia: Copyright: Scope, US Government: Copyright Basics, p. 3).
So I am NOT breaking copyright, but I would rather that publisher never has any concerns which means they might as well NOT know anything about the new labs.
Second, I don't want the upcoming fall and spring students to know much about the new labs.
They might feel aggrieved at having to buy the lab manual if they knew that new "free" labs existed.
We will just keep quiet about the new labs or just say that they were experiments developed for the summer which is true.
For the upcoming fall and spring semesters, we will be using the lab manual. This is a departmental commitment from some time ago. After 2014 spring, there is no further commitment to the publisher of the lab manual. Whoever takes over as lab coordinator after that can make their own choice about labs.
The files are all in directory labs.
They were all prepared for my own sections.
I've put links to them in the schedule so that my students can find them.
You-all are welcome to use them if you like, but I know instructors mostly like to specify their own preparations and do their own introductions.
But further cogitation has derailed the plan.
My idea was to create new versions of Diane's labs: all new text of my own creation, all new figures (my own, public domain, creative commons), and some rearrangements and changes.
This may well be true.
But I can't convince myself that it is obviously true or that Kendall-Hunt would see it that way.
I have looked at copyright rules (see Wikipedia: Copyright: Scope, US Government: Copyright Basics, p. 3).
They say clearly that "procedures" CANNOT be copyrighted.
We often call labs "procedures", but reflection suggests that is NOT what the rules mean by "procedures". I think they mean assembly instructions or mathematical algorithms.
As I now see it, a lab manual is a "literary work" and each lab exercise is creation in which certain activities and questions are selected and ordered.
I think the idea for each activity and question is NOT copyrighted, but the selection and ordering probably is. In fact, I think it should be.
At what point does re-ordering and changing emphases and some topics pass out of copyright infringement? It's hard to tell.
The best approach is to rethink a lab exercise from scratch after looking at similar labs with independent copyrights.
Then the writer can be make an independent choice among different options for parts of the lab as well try to come up with something new.
For astronomy labs on certain topics, the options and the ordering may be limited.
The writer may end up with a lab exercise that is a lot like one or more of the labs that he/she has looked at.
A lab on the sky (like Diane's celestial sphere) must include certain traditional topics and must have an order largely dictated by the order of learning.
But the selection must be original even if it arrives at much the same result.
This is important an point.
The Wikipedia article on copyright (which I think is trustworthy) says that copyright protects original creation, but doesn't demand uniqueness (see Wikipedia: Copyright: Obtaining and enforcing copyright). Two works that are coincidentally much alike can have independent copyrights.
The non-uniqueness situation is probably pretty common in astronomy lab exercises given the limitations of equipment, software, and elementary topics available.
Nevertheless, honesty and legality require a lab writer to make an independent effort and also give the appearance of an independent effort.
I would still like to write new labs, but NOT breaking copyright and NOT giving the appearance of breaking copyright demands more work than I'd originally thought.
The work can't be done now.
So we will be using Diane's lab manual for the 2013 summer semester as well as for the upcoming fall and spring semesters.
I think in the long run, Diane's lab manual will be phased out.
It seems to be my job to do this.