NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources from across the Community January 11, 2002 PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY NINCH, in association with the Visual Resources Association and the Art Libraries Society of North America, presents SAINT LOUIS COPYRIGHT TOWN MEETING "The Changing Research and Collections Environment: The Information Commons Today" Saturday March 23, 2002 Hyatt Regency Union Station, St Louis 9:30am-12:30pm http://www.ninch.org/copyright/townmeetings02/stlouis.html * * * Free of Charge * * * This program is made possible by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation * * * The National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) announces the first in its 2002 series of NINCH COPYRIGHT TOWN MEETINGS. The meeting will be part of the first joint conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America and the Visual Resources Association. The subject of this first 2002 meeting is "The Changing Research and Collections Environment: The Information Commons Today." The meeting is free-of-charge and open to the public. It will be held 9:30am-12:30pm on Saturday March 23 in the conference hotel: the Hyatt Regency in the refurbished Union Station, St Louis. Designed by Theodore Link, and once the second busiest train station in the nation, this 1884 building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The Town Meeting will focus on the history and meaning of the "information commons," a free public resource, and how it intersects with licensing, one of the prevailing mechanisms for distributing digital resources today. * * * After contextual introductions, the meeting will open with legal counsel Michael Shapiro (currently Attorney-Advisor, Office of International and Legislative Affairs, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), who will review the evolution of the notion of an "Information Commons." Architectural historian and Bryn Mawr lecturer Jeffrey Cohen will then speak about the practical issues of implementing a public domain database to provide wide and free access to certain cultural material. The second part of the meeting will open with Mary Case (Association of Research Libraries) describing current trends in licensing, currently the leading means of distributing digital information online. She will be followed by two speakers describing the approaches of two organizations in licensing cultural materials, principally for educational and nonprofit use. First, Robert Clarida (Partner, Cowan, Liebowitz and Latman) will speak on the copyright approaches of the Mellon Foundation in developing and distributing the ArtSTOR collection (an independent not-for-profit organization that will develop, "store," and distribute electronically digital images and related scholarly materials for the study of art, architecture, and other fields in the humanities). Tony Gill (Program Officer, Research Libraries Group) will then outline the licensing arrangements for contributors and academic subscribers to RLG Cultural Materials (a new digital multimedia collection of works and artifacts drawn from the collections of RLG member institutions) and will also describe the Alliance's future aspirations for wider licensing to the commercial and pay-per-view sectors. The meeting will conclude with an open forum with questions, comments and discussion on the issues raised by the presentations. * To be admitted, non-conference participants need to collect a special "speakers badge" from the Conference Registration Desk. * * * The NINCH Copyright Town Meetings balance expert opinion and audience participation on the basics of copyright law, the implications of copyright online, recent changes in copyright law and practice, and practical issues related to the networking of cultural heritage materials. * * * Speakers Kathe Hicks Albrecht is the visual resources curator at the American University in Washington, D.C. and has been actively involved in issues surrounding the use of digital image information and its impact on the educational community. As chair of the VRA Intellectual Property Rights Committee, she was instrumental in the development of the VRA Image Collection Guidelines. Mary Case is Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) where she has coordinated programs and workshops on the licensing of electronic resources, helped in the development of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), and coordinated several national conferences and roundtables on issues in scholarly communication. Robert Clarida is a partner at the New York firm of Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman. On behalf of clients such as Harvard University and the New York Public Library he has been actively involved with digital copyright issues in the library context, and has advised the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with respect to the digitization of artworks for the ArtSTOR project. Jeffrey Cohen is an architectural historian specializing in nineteenth- century subjects and teaching in the Growth & Structure of Cities Program at Bryn Mawr College, where he is also director of the Digital Media and Visual Resource Center. He leads several digital projects, such as the Image Exchange Project of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) and "Places in Time: Documentation of Place in the Greater Philadelphia Area." Tony Gill has been a Program Officer at the Research Libraries Group since June 1999, with a remit to facilitate collaborative activities in the visual arts, museums and natural history arenas. He is the liaison for the RLG Art & Architecture Group and the SCIPIO Taskforce, is active in the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group and is extensively involved in RLG's Cultural Materials Initiative. Roger Lawson is administrative librarian at the National Gallery of Art. A member of ARLIS/NA since 1979, he served as President in 1997 and is currently a member of the Public Policy Committee and the society's liaison to NINCH. He has also participated in a number of RLG initiatives, including chair of the Art and Architecture Group in 1994. Michael Shapiro is an attorney and author specializing in domestic and international copyright matters. Formerly General Counsel of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he currently serves as Attorney-Advisor, Office of International and Legislative Affairs, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Dr. Shapiro has written extensively and lectured widely on a broad range of legal and cultural topics and is the co-author of "A Museum Guide to Copyright and Trademark (American Association of Museums, 1999). * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Thanks to support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, participation in the town meetings is free of charge. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Local committees have organized the town meetings, which have been coordinated and reviewed by the NINCH Town Meetings Working Group. The Copyright Town Meetings series is a component of the NINCH Copyright Education Program, organized by the NINCH Advocacy Working Group. SAINT LOUIS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Kathy Albrecht, American University Roger Lawson, National Gallery of Art Barbara Rockenbach, Yale University Maryly Snow, University of California, Berkeley NINCH TOWN MEETINGS WORKING GROUP: Kathe Albrecht, American University/Visual Resources Association Mary Case, Association of Research Libraries Robert Baron, Independent Scholar Kenneth Crews, Indiana University (Advisor) Georgia Harper, University of Texas (Advisor) Christine Sundt, University of Oregon/Visual Resources Association/NINCH BOARD Marta Teegen, College Art Association Sanford Thatcher, Pennsylvania State University Press/Association of American University Presses Patricia Williams, Americans for the Arts Martha Winnacker, University of California (Advisor) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ============================================================== NINCH-Announce is an announcement listserv, produced by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH). 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