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----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Gee, Max, you have missed a lot of the fun already but it is never to late to catch up! I have been representing ARLIS/NA at the CONFU proceedings at the request of the Public Policy Committee and the Executive Board. There has not been a lot of discussion on the ARLIS discussion list perhaps because so much has been posted on the VRA list. According to Maryly Snow (UC Berkeley) this is because this issue is only of interest to VRD members who apparently only respond to the VRA list. I have disagreed. I believe this is an issue of interest to all members of the Society. The Visual Resources Association has been a presence on the digital image archives working group for far longer than ARLIS. Kathe Albrecht (American University) and Macie Hall (Johns Hopkins University) have worked incredibly hard to represent the views and needs of this profession and the academic community. Many changes in the guidelines' content can be directly traced to their participation in the process. With regard to the content of the CONFU guidelines, The most recent draft available for review on the CAA web site has already been revised. (View at http://alberti.mit.edu/caa/The_Profession/cei/index.html) Another meeting has been scheduled for October 6th after which the final draft will be released for the final discussion and ratification by the Society. There have been a lot of misconceptions about the guidelines. Some have said that they carry almost the same force as law. This is incorrect. They are intended to aid institutions in making decisions on how to best digitize their collections, both pre-existing collections and future acquisitions. The biggest complaint I have heard about the guidelines is that they favor rights holders over users and that what has always been considered fair use is said to no longer be in force. Rights holders are given more protection under the guidelines because that is exactly what they are; the person or organization that hold the copyright of an image. Remember when you were a teenager and your parents let you drive their car. They set the rules and conditions. If you wanted to use the car you followed them. If you didn't and were caught doing something you shouldn't have, there was some forme of retribution. On the other hand, in addition to the rules, they also wanted you to help out and use the car to run errands that would benefit the family in general. Instead of paying for the gas and maintenance like you might have, they let you use the car, maintaining it themselves, even letting you use it for longer than you had agreed. That was not the best analogy but it is my poor attempt at making the issues we soon will face a little more clear. Images that are under copyright protection may soon be more difficult to digitize and mount on a campus system if some rules aren't followed. Artists who create works of art, vendors who make slides available, museums that spend small fortunes photographing art objects, publishers who reproduce them in books, feel that some control needs to be maintained. This is not just a monetary thing, with the possible exception of the new (and growing) companies that purchase the electronic rights to images from museums and existing artists' rights organizations. Museums have long believed in making their objects available for study to educators (from grammar to graduate schools) and independent scholars at no fee or a reduced fee. It is to the advantage of all rights holders to have a more art literate society. A legitimate concern about the guidelines has been the lack of addressing what is fair use. While I believe that the principle has finally been stated in the guidelines, it does refer one back to the Copyright Act in order for the reader to get the proper sense of the principle. Far too few members of our profession have actually sat down and read the Copyright Act. I don't blame them. Booorrring! It is, however, a vital part of what we as art information professionals use in our daily work. The CONFU guidelines are an attempt to help us and our institutions make decisions on digitization. For those who have read and observed the guidelines through the past year or so, you should have noticed the growing acknowledgment on the importance of using digital images in education and creating and maintaining a catalogue of images. The balance of weight in the guidelines has steadily been shifting from rights holders to users so that no, the guidelines are much more balanced than they were in the first drafts. Please carefully read the guidelines as posted on the CAA web page. Kathe Albrecht's recent posting to VRA-L contains revisions made on September 4th. After the October 6th meeting when the final draft is complete, it will make reasoned dialogue much more relevant and assist the Board in making their decision whether to endorse the guidelines or not. I will be happy to respond to comments on the guidelines and the process behind them as best I can. Gregory P. J. Most Chief Slide Librarian National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C. [log in to unmask]