International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars (Icepops)

Icepops is the International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars.

The fifth edition of Icepops (Icepops 2024) is happening – this time as a Pocket Edition (meaning on a slightly smaller, but no less inspiring or fun, scale). Icepops will take place at Leeds Beckett University (city campus) on Thursday 5th September and Friday 6th September 2024. The main conference will start at lunchtime on 5th September and include an evening social. The ALT CoOL SIG AGM will take place on the morning of Friday 6th September and we’ll be arranging tours of local libraries.

Our confirmed keynote speaker is Kyle K Courtney, Copyright Advisor, Harvard University.

Bookings are now open

Icepops was devised by Chris Morrison and Jane Secker and is run in conjunction with the CILIP Information Literacy Group. The day will include a world café, lightning talks, and an evening social.

Call for papers

The call for papers is now open until Monday 3rd June. With everyone talking about AI, the theme of this year’s conference is ‘Copyright and the Human Being‘ and we are looking for presentations on this topic or one of our sub-themes which include:

Navigating systems;
Building communities;
Breaking the rules

Conference format and programme

The conference programme will be published in mid June.

The conference will include:

Lightning talks: Presenters will have 7 minutes to deliver a plenary presentation on copyright education.

World Cafe presentations: There will be a series of world café presentations each allocated a table to answer questions and demonstrate their work in small groups. Delegate groups will rotate around the room so you have a chance to hear from each of the speakers.

Evening Social: Food, drinks, chat and song – more details coming soon!

Post conference (6th September): ALT Copyright and Online Learning Special Interest Group AGM and tours of several libraries in libraries.

Who should attend?

Icepops is aimed at copyright specialists and non-specialists, librarians, archivists, curators, learning technologists, educational developers, teachers, lecturers, publishers and creators involved in copyright education. The focus is on all levels of education from schools to higher education and continuing professional development. UK and international delegates are invited to share their experiences with colleagues.

The event was partly inspired by the IFLA one day seminar held in August 2017 on Models of Copyright Education in Information Literacy Programs.

The Icepops Annual 2019 (link to PDF of conference proceedings)

What people have said about Icepops:

It was fun! (as well as informative and relevant to my work). I liked the fast pace which kept our interest throughout the day. All the presentations were interesting and food for thought.

The games hackathon was my fave session. It combined everything we learned about during ICEPOPS in an active, fun, social way. It was also placed right at the time of day when our attention might have lagged.

Thank you for all your work putting it together! I hope to stay in touch with people I met there. This is an important and growing community in the scholarly communications and information literacy worlds.

Or read a review of Icepops 2018 by Anne-Lise Harding published in the Journal of Information Literacy.

Booking and costs:

Bookings for Icepops 2024 are now open

We have tried to keep the price as low as possible

Costs : Includes attendance, afternoon refreshments on day 1, an evening social and the post-conference events on day two. Accommodation will need to be booked separately.

ILG / CILIP member / Presenter / Student rate: £40 (including VAT)

Full rate: £65 (including VAT)

Accommodation: There are a wide variety of hotels in central Leeds and we have put together a list for Icepops delegates. The event will take place at the the city campus of Leeds Beckett University.

Our Keynote Speaker

Our confirmed keynote speaker, is long-time friend of Icepops Kyle K Courtney Esq, from Harvard University.

Kyle is lawyer and librarian, is the Director of Copyright and Information Policy for Harvard Library. He works closely with the Harvard community to establish a culture of shared understanding of information policy and copyright issues among staff, faculty, and students. His “Copyright First Responders” initiative is in its 10th year at Harvard, and he runs a parallel national network that has spread the program to libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions in Alaska, Arizona, California, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. He is also an advisor to the American Law Institute, helping to write the “Restatement of Copyright, First.” In 2014, he co-founded Fair Use Week, now an international celebration sponsored annually by over 100+ universities, libraries, and other institutions.

In 2020 Kyle co-founded the non-profit organization called “Library Futures” which empowers libraries to take control of their digital futures. He also co-authored the seminal “White Paper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books” and his latest forthcoming work is in “Copyright & Censorship: Historical Dangers of Licensing Regimes in the Digital Age” by Cornell University Press.

Previous editions of Icepops

The fourth edition of Icepops took place at the University of Glasgow from 19-21 July 2023. The event was co-sponsored by CREATe (UK Copyright and Creative Economy Centre) at the University of Glasgow and included a pre-conference event on e-books and e-lending. Our keynote speakers were Prof Nicola Whitton, Northumbria University and Dr Amy Thomas, University of Glasgow. Presentations, resources and photos from the event are available from the online programme.

The third in-person edition of Icepops 2022 was held at the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy on Thursday 8th September, followed by an evening social and tours of the Bodleian and Museum of Natural History on Friday 9th September. Our keynote speakers were Prof Emily Hudson, Kings College, London, Dr Andrea Wallace, University of Exeter and Douglas McCarthy, Europeana Foundation.

You can view presentations and photos from 2022 and we held a webinar on Friday 23rd September 2022 to share highlights from the conference.

Details about the previous conferences are available including the presentations and photos from 2018 and presentations and photos from 2019.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Icepops! was held in June 2021. The programme includes links to the presentations and recordings of the lightning talks. You can also access further details about speakers including their abstracts. Please note our World Cafe sessions were not recorded, but there are further resources available from World Cafe presenters.

Organisers and sponsors:

The event is being organised by Chris Morrison and Jane Secker (copyrightliteracy.org) and the Information Literacy Group.