Date/Time: Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 11:00am–12:00pm
This workshop will provide you with practical guidance for navigating copyright questions and other legal considerations for your dissertation or thesis. Whether you’re just starting to write or you’re getting ready to file, you can use our tips and workflow to figure out what you can use, what rights you have as an author, and what it means to share your dissertation online.
Date/Time: Tuesday, November 18, 2025 (11:00am–12:30pm)
RSVP to get the Zoom link
Hear from a panel of experts—an acquisitions editor, a first-time book author, and an author rights expert—about the process of turning your dissertation into a book. You’ll come away from this panel discussion with practical advice about revising your dissertation, writing a book proposal, approaching editors, signing your first contract, and navigating the peer review and publication process.
Two Line Press, a press line for the Center for the Art of Translations, concentrates on translations of phenomenal fiction from around the world. Oliver Sears initially founded the Two Lines journal (UC Catalog Search for journal) in 1993 to focus on the art of translation and acknowledge the hard, incredible work of the translators.[1] In 2000, Sears and a team of wonderful collaborators launched the Center for the Art of Translation (CAT) out of San Francisco both to run the journal and start the Calico Series for books.[2]
As of the writing of this post, the press is reaching toward 100 translations of books from Arabic, Czech, Finish, Macedonian, Swahili, Spanish, Thai, and more. Readers can take a look at their catalog at https://www.catranslation.org/books/.
You can find more about Two Lines Press’ events on their Instagram page. Note that as of the writing of this post, they have a series of events in both New York City and in San Francisco! The ones in San Francisco include book events such as Mary Jo Bang on Dante’s Paradiso with Tess Taylor (information) and participation in the Litquake Small Press Book (September 28).
Readers are encouraged to check out these recent titles from UC Berkeley Library!
UC Berkeley has these and more titles from Two Line Press. Find out what we have through the UC Library Search.
[1] About, Center for the Art of Translation, accessed July 16, 2025, https://www.catranslation.org/about/.
[2] Sophia Stewart, “Two Lines Press Pushes Translation’s Boundaries,” Publishers Weekly, August 7, 2025, https://www.publishersweekly.com/.
Selections from the library’s collection of loanable artwork (the Graphic Arts Loan Collection) are now on display in the Art History/Classics Library (308 Doe).
You are welcome to attend one of the upcoming library orientation sessions for the Art History/Classics Library (308 Doe). The sessions are capped at 20 students, so be sure to reserve your spot via the rsvp form. Sessions are offered on the following dates/times:
Thursday, September 11th, 12-1
Monday, September 15th, 4-5
Tuesday, September 16th, 5-6
One of the amazing, small presses that we’ve acquired material from is Mammoth Publications (https://mammothpublications.net). Mammoth was founded in 2003 and is located in Healdsburg, CA. It was initially founded to provide a space for poets including Eddie Two-Rivers (Wikipedia) to release their work. Authors Thomas Pecore Weso and Denise Low served as co-publishers until 2023, releasing two-to-four books and/or chapbooks a year. Denise Low still heads Mammoth, continuing to release excellent works of poetry, memoirs, and more.
The press prioritizes Indigenous and regional authors.
I encourage you to take a look at some of UC Berkeley’s recent acquisition of Mammoth Publication’s books, including:
Take a look at these or other Mammoth Publication books at UC Berkeley Library.
Planning to scrape a website or database? Train an AI tool? Before you scrape and before you train, there are steps you need to take!
First, consult the general terms and conditions that you need to comply with for all Library electronic resources (journal articles, books, databases, and more) in the Conditions of Use for Electronic Resources policy.
Second, if you also intend to use any Library electronic resources with AI tools or for text and data mining research, check what’s allowed under our license agreements by looking at the AI & TDM guide. If you don’t see your resource or database listed, please e-mail tdm-access@berkeley.edu and we’ll check the license agreement and tell you what’s permitted.
Violating license agreements can result in the entire campus losing access to critical research resources, and potentially expose you and the University to legal liability.
Below we answer some FAQs.
Most of the digital research materials you access through the UC Berkeley Library aren’t owned by the University. Instead, they’re owned by commercial publishers, academic societies, and other content providers who create and distribute scholarly resources.
Think of using the Library’s electronic resources like watching Netflix: you can watch movies and shows on Netflix, but Netflix doesn’t own most of that content—they pay licensing fees to film studios and content creators for the right to make it available to you. So does the Library.
In fact, each year, the Library signs license agreements and pays substantial licensing fees (millions of dollars annually) to publishers like Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and hundreds of other content providers so that you can access their journals, books, and databases for your research and coursework.
A license agreement is a legal contract between UC Berkeley and each publisher that spells out exactly how the UC Berkeley community can use that publisher’s content. These contracts typically cover:
Any time you access a database or use your Berkeley credentials to log in to a resource, you must comply with the terms of the license agreement that the Library has signed. All the agreements are different.
Unfortunately, no. Each publisher has their own standard contract terms, and they rarely agree to identical language. Here’s why:
The good news is that the UC Berkeley Library is among global leaders in negotiating the very best possible terms of text and data mining and AI uses for you. We’ve set the stage for the world in terms of AI rights in license agreements, and the UC President has recognized the efforts of our Library in this regard.
Still, we can’t force publishers to accept uniform language, and we can’t guarantee that every resource allows AI usage. This is why we need to check each agreement individually when you want to use content with AI tools.
We agree. (And we’re glad you’re staying up-to-speed on copyright and fair use.) But there’s a distinction between what copyright law allows and how license agreements (which are contracts) affect your rights under copyright law.
Copyright law gives you certain rights, including fair use for research and education.
Contract law can override those rights when you agree to specific terms. When UC Berkeley signs a license agreement with a publisher so you can use content, both the University and its users (that’s you) must comply with those contract terms.
Therefore, even if your AI training or text mining would normally qualify as fair use, the license agreement you’re bound by might explicitly prohibit it, or place specific qualifications on how AI might be used (e.g. use of AI permissible; training of AI prohibited).
You should consult the general terms and conditions that you need to comply with for all Library electronic resources (journal articles, books, databases, and more) in the Conditions of Use for Electronic Resources policy.
If you also intend to use any Library electronic resources with AI tools or for text and data mining research, check what’s allowed under our license agreements by looking at the AI & TDM guide. If you don’t see your resource or database listed, then e-mail tdm-access@berkeley.edu and we’ll check the license agreement and tell you what’s permitted.
Violating license agreements can result in losing access to critical research resources for the entire UC Berkeley community—and potentially expose you and the University to legal liability and lawsuits.
For the University:
This doesn’t just affect the University—it also affects you. Violating the agreements can result in:
The following kinds of materials are typically governed by Library license agreements:
If you’re downloading or mining content from a website that is not licensed by the Library, you should read the website’s terms of use, sometimes called “terms of service.” They will usually be found through a link at the bottom of the web page. Carefully understanding the terms of service can help you make informed decisions about how to proceed.
Even if the terms of use for the website or database restrict or prohibit text mining or AI, the provider may offer an application programming interface, or API, with its own set of terms that allows scraping and AI. You could also try contacting the provider and requesting permission for the research you want to do.
Even when using UC Berkeley’s own AI platforms (like Gemini or River), you still need to check on whether you can upload Library-licensed content to that platform. The fact that the University provides the tool doesn’t automatically make all Library-licensed content okay to upload to it.
Again, you still need to check on whether you can upload Library-licensed content to that platform. The fact that you subscribe to the tool doesn’t mean you can upload Library-licensed content to it.
We wish it were that simple, but the Library signs thousands of agreements each year with highly complex terms. We’re working on trying to make the terms more visible to you, though. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, check out the AI & TDM guide. If you don’t see your resource or database listed, then e-mail tdm-access@berkeley.edu and we’ll tell you what’s permitted.
Best practices are to:
For text mining and AI questions: tdm-access@berkeley.edu
For other licensing questions: acq-licensing@lists.berkeley.edu
For copyright and fair use guidance: schol-comm@berkeley.edu
This guidance is for informational purposes and should not be construed as legal advice. When in doubt, always contact library staff for assistance with specific situations.
Discover fantastic works of recently published Latinx literature in the Library’s collection this month! Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the many accomplishments of Latinx communities and draws attention to their struggles, beginning on September 15th.
All are invited to attend our 2025 Hispanic American Heritage Month webinar that this time focuses on Afro-Latinx heritage.
The webinar will take place on September 16th from 12:45 pm to 2:15 pm PST (3:45 pm to 5:15 pm EST). The webinar is free and open to all with prior registration.
One may register for the webinar here: https://ucberk.li/3KN.
This webinar features three scholars whose work advances understanding of Latin American and Afro-Latinx communities through social policy, culture, and education. In recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the event explores racial and gender justice, ethnoracial legislation, climate ethnography, and Afro-Indigenous knowledge systems. Presenters offer critical insights into how law, environment, heritage, and pedagogy shape the lived experiences of Hispanic and Afro-Latinx communities.
As the war in Ukraine is now in its third year of current military conflict (excluding the takeover of Crimea), it becomes vital for us to provide resources to our students related to the actual war and its progress. For this reason, I wanted to focus on two different platforms that currently offer updates from the field as it evolves on the ground. I hope that the readers of these maps will find them helpful to make their own assessment of the current state of affairs. The first resource is the Deepstate map.
The interface is pretty intuitive, and the map can be displayed in both English and Ukrainian legends. Below is the screenshot that shows the map as of 11:05 am PST on August 25, 2025.
The deepstate live has several different partners that sponsor the project. One of them is Brave1.
Also, there is a blog that is associated with DeepState Live, which can be accessed here.
The second source is hosted by the Institute for the Study of War, which can be accessed here. The resource provides an assessment of the Russian offensive in Ukraine with a cutoff date of August 24, 2025.
