NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
October 29, 2002
Creating Museum Intellectual Property Policy in a Digital World
Report on NINCH Copyright Town Meeting Available
http://www.ninch.org/copyright/2002/toronto.report.html
Full and summary reports are now available on "Creating Museum
Intellectual Property Policy in a Digital World," a NINCH Copyright
Town Meeting, hosted by the Museum Computer Network at its Toronto
conference (September 7, 2002), and co-sponsored by the Canadian
Heritage Information Network (CHIN).
This meeting follows "Copyright Policies in the University," a NINCH
Copyright Town Meeting hosted by the University of Oregon in November
2001, <http://www.ninch.org/copyright/2001/eugenereport.html>.
For Lolly Gasaway, Director of the Law Library at UNC, and a
presenter at both meetings, Intellectual Property (IP) policy not
only protects an institution, it can also educate its community and
encourage creative use of copyright material, while establishing
best-practice norms. The digital expectation of easy universal
access has heightened the copyright stakes and policy is one
mechanism that can ease the transition into this new territory.
For Rina Pantalony, CHIN's legal counsel, museum IP policy can guide
good fiscal management and drive better management of IP assets,
while balancing the interests of users, curators and the institution.
It can also enable museums to join IP debates in the broader
community more effectively.
The Toronto meeting focused on practical steps and key considerations
to be included in creating effective policy. The Guggenheim's Maria
Pallante recommended a broad and on-going audit of an institution's
IP as the best way to start and outlined how to do it. Such an audit
grounds policy, she said, by declaring what a museum owns, while it
can also trigger new creative projects using assets that it uncovers.
While Brian Porter of the Royal Ontario Museum convincingly
demonstrated the role of IP Policy in effective asset management, the
Smithsonian's Rachelle Browne, showed why and how economic and legal
concerns have to be balanced by moral values. An institution's core
values can measure how a proposed policy fits a museum's mission,
enhances its services to the community and respects and supports
innovation.
A practical workshop enabled participants to try out outlining policy
responses to a range of situations in which many interests needed to
be balanced. The report of this meeting will form the basis of a book
on "Creating Museum IP Policy," to be written by Diane Zorich and
co-published by NINCH and CHIN in Spring 2003.
The NINCH Copyright Town Meeting series has been generously supported
by grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. For information on all
the Town Meetings, see http://www.ninch.org/copyright/.
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