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/.

--

==============================================================
NINCH-Announce is an announcement listserv, produced by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH). The subjects of announcements are not the projects of NINCH, unless otherwise noted; neither does NINCH necessarily endorse the subjects of announcements. We attempt to credit all re-distributed news and announcements and appreciate reciprocal credit.

For questions, comments or requests to un-subscribe, contact the editor:
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
==============================================================
See and search back issues of NINCH-ANNOUNCE at <http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-announce/>.

==============================================================