Revised October 28, 2016
- Library Blog Category Creation
Current UC Berkeley Library and Affiliated Library staff are eligible to request a blog category in support of work-related communications. -
Use of Library Blog
Posting
As a general matter, you may post work related content freely to your blog category and to those of others, so long as you represent yourself accurately, and the content is not illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, infringing of intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy or otherwise injurious or objectionable.
You may not use the UC Berkeley name to endorse or promote any political opinion, cause or candidate. While you may recommend to library patrons products that have been selected for use by the UC Library, you may not promote any product for its commercial gain. Representation of your personal opinions as institutionally endorsed by the UC Berkeley Library or UC Berkeley is strictly prohibited. Only those with authority delegated by the Library Administration may represent the official Library position on any specific issue.
By posting content to any blog, you warrant and represent that you either own or otherwise control all of the rights to that content, including, without limitation, all the rights necessary for you to provide, post, upload, input or submit the content, or that your use of the content is a protected fair use. You agree that you will not knowingly and with intent to defraud provide material and misleading false information. You represent and warrant also that the content you supply does not violate these Terms.
The UC Berkeley Library believes deeply in free speech and does not pre-screen or regularly review posted content. However, the Library has the right to remove at its sole discretion any content that it considers to violate these Terms or the terms of any other University policy that governs your use of the campus networks.
Acceptable Use
Bloggers are required to check facts, present balanced views, acknowledge and correct errors, and check spelling and grammar before actual posting. While quotes from related websites and blogs are encouraged, bloggers are expected to do due diligence to credit their sources.
In addition, bloggers are expected to accept the following as common sense guidelines:- Respect the institution's confidentiality and proprietary information.
- Ask your manager, director or AUL if you have any questions about what is appropriate to include in your blog post.
- Be respectful to the University, employees, patrons, donors, alumni and individuals in general.
- Understand when the Library or University asks that topics not be discussed for confidentiality or legal compliance reasons.
Accessing
You understand that all content posted to the blog is the sole responsibility of the individual who posted the content. You understand, also, that all opinions expressed by other users of this site are expressed strictly in their individual work-related capacities, and not as representatives of the UC Berkeley Library.
You agree that UC Berkeley Library will not be liable, under any circumstances and in any way, for any errors or omissions, loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of use of any content posted on this site. You agree that you must evaluate and bear all risks associated with the use of any content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such content. - Blog Support
The Blog site is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. The UC Berkeley Library will support sites as long as they are being widely used and will provide 6 months notice if support is discontinued. The UC Berkeley Library will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of or inability to use this site. You expressly agree that you use this site solely at your own risk.
- Copyright Policies
The UC Berkeley Library respects the intellectual property of others, and requires that our users do the same. Blogs, like websites, are subject to copyright policies adopted by the University of California.
When the UC Berkeley Library publicly displays, publicly performs, reproduces or distributes copies of your Content, or Content as incorporated into a collective work, the Library will make its best efforts to credit your authorship. You grant UC Berkeley Library permission to use your name for such attribution purposes. RSS aggregators are allowed to copy, distribute, display any Content on your blog that you syndicate using RSS. All Content on your blog is syndicated for RSS aggregation unless you change your settings to indicate otherwise.
If you believe that your work has been copied and is accessible on this site in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or that your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please contact us. - Privacy Policy
Public Nature of Content Submitted to Sites
The nature of blogging is to reach a public audience. Please be aware that any information that you submit whether through forms or email, including personally identifiable information, may be publicly displayed on sites hosted at blog url or on websites not within our control. If you don't want others to see such information, don't submit it.
Forms and Content
To create a new blog, or register for an existing one, you will be required to submit an email address. Your address may also be used to send you email bulletins from individual UC Berkeley Library blogs to which you subscribe, or to attribute comments or posts to you. If there are problems with your individual site, we may contact you via email as well.
If you contribute content, such as discussion comments, to any of our blogs, your contribution may be publicly displayed including personally identifiable information. Display of visitor content is determined by the discretion of the individual blog editors.
As the editor of a blog, you may establish a range of access restrictions to your material. The initial default setting for individual blogs allows outside search engines, indexes and third party sites to scan each blog, create hyperlinks to individual blogs or distribute it further via feeds. If you change these settings, there is no guarantee that outside search engines will omit your blog from its searches. Please check your default settings to discern the level of access the public has to your individual blog.
Each time you update your blog, it may also send pings or feeds to sites that index or track newly updated blogs. These sites may publicly display a hyperlink to your site and the time that you updated it. If your site publishes XML feeds, content from or links to your site may be publicly displayed on third party sites. Depending on the settings on your site, email bulletins that contain content from your site may be sent out to subscribers.
IP Addresses and Referrers
We may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to tailor site content and to format the site and software to user needs, and to generate aggregate statistical reports. We may use aggregate visitor data to prepare publicly displayed reports regarding the traffic on individual blogs, site popularity rankings, and referrers that visitors use to access individual blogs.
Cookies
If you visit our web site, we may use session cookies while your browser is open, or while you are logged into the blog. To facilitate our registration and login functions, we may use cookies to recognize you when you return to the blogs hosted our site. If you do not logout of your account, these cookies allow us to keep track of your username and password, so that you do not have to resubmit the information to log into your account. Always remember to log out of your site or account so that the computer's other users cannot access your account.
Library Policy On The Collection, Use, And Disclosure Of Electronic Information
Links to Independent Websites
Blogs hosted by the UC Berkeley Library may link to independently run web sites outside of the www.lib.berkeley.edu domain. UC Berkeley Library is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such web sites.
Children's Privacy
Collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 is prohibited by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). The UC Berkeley Library sites are intended for adults and we will not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years old. If you are a parent or legal guardian of a child under age 13 who has become a member of a site hosted by https://news.lib.berkeley.edu, please notify us of a suspected violation.
- Other University Policies Related to Blogs
Use of the Blog service is subject to all applicable UC Berkeley and University of California policies in addition to any state and federal law. Applicable UC policies include but are not limited to the computer use policy and the E-Berkeley policy, as well as the UC Electronic Communication Policy .
- Modification of These Terms of Use
The UC Berkeley Library reserves the right to change, at any time, at our sole discretion, the Terms under which these Services are offered. You are responsible for regularly reviewing these Terms. Your continued use of the Services constitutes your agreement to all such Terms.
** Many thanks to Harvard Law's Blog policy from which we liberally borrowed.