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Date:   7/27/98  6:14 PM

RE:     NINCH Director's Summary Report--June 98



NINCH BULLETIN

Summary Report: June 1998

1. Executive Committee Meeting
2. Project Reports
        Copyright & Public Interest campaign
        Computer Science & the Humanities
        Copyright & Fair Use Town Meetings
        Public-Private Collaboration
3. Other Project Meetings
        American Strategy
        National Moving Image Preservation Plans Implementation Committee:
         Cataloging Task Force
4. Public Meetings:
        Copyright & the Public Good (Center for Arts & Culture)
        American Studies Workshop for Teachers (Georgetown University)
5. Private Meetings
        Mellon Foundation
        Columbia University
        NEH/NSF
6. Conference Presentations
a) Americans for the Arts: "Internet Policy: The Art Part"
b) Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations: "Clio Wired"

=========================================
[Please note some web pages are for members only:
user name: bronwyn
password; brillig]


1.  EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING
The first NINCH executive committee committee meeting took place May 26. A
summary report was posted to all members
(<http://www-ninch.cni.org/ADMIN/MEETINGS/ExecComm_May98.html>).
*  A NINCH "Core Values" statement and a Copyright statement were approved,
pending changes, and will be submitted to the Board via e-mail for
approval.
*  The director presented an outline "Achievements to Date" ( a revised
version of which is available at
<http://www-ninch.cni.org/ORGANIZATION/achieve.html>.
* The director presented an outline for a NINCH Strategic Plan II, building
on the current "Start-Up Strategic Plan." Continuing our current work on
building information and education resources, NINCH's growing program
includes the following:

* re-organizing and re-designing the Website;
* designing a guide to and collection of Best Practices in digitizing and
networking cultural resources;
* coordinating an international database of humanities digital projects
(working with directors of humanities computing centers in the US, UK and
Canada);
* developing a campaign on copyright and public interest issues and
extending this year's collaborative copyright town meetings;
* developing the"Computer Science & the Humanities" initiative with the
National Academy of Science, the Coalition for Networked Information and
the American Council of Learned Societies;
* creating "Humanities Informatics" (with American Council of Learned
Societies and individual societies)
* planning for best approaches to public-private sector collaboration in
networking cultural resources

The executive committee found the plan ambitious and broadly on target but
cautioned the director to be realistic about what could be achieved given
the size and resources of the coalition.  It recommended further
development and thought on the plan before being presented to the Board in
the Fall.

2.  PROJECT REPORTS
a) PUBLIC INTEREST CAMPAIGN
The Public Interest Task Force (for its charge see
<http://www-ninch.cni.org/ADMIN/MEETINGS/PI_Taskforce/charge.html> will
meet July 31. In a preparatory conference call, members felt that before we
ventured full tilt into the public campaign, we needed to ensure that the
entire membership understood the campaign and were supportive of it and of
NINCH's strategies. Therefore the July 31 meeting will be dedicated to
developing a prototype package of material that would summarize NINCH's
achievements, describe our strategy and elicit support and viewpoints from
members through a short survey instrument. The package would include, for
example, the core values statement; an envisioning statement about the
future we are building; a clear statement on NINCH's advocacy activity; our
achievements to date; a members survey; and a brochure.

b)  Computer Science & the Humanities
A "Steering Committee for Computer Science and the Humanities" has now been
established to forward the goals formulated in the round table discussions
held at the National Academy of Sciences on March 28, 1997, and March 26,
1998. (<http://www.acls.org/op41-toc.htm>). Representatives from NINCH, the
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and the National Academy of
Engineering; the Coalition for Networked Information; the American Council
of Learned Societies and the American Historical Association comprise the
current committee. For a draft description of the steering committee see
<http://www-ninch.cni.org/PROJECTS/C&H/SC.html> The next meeting is
scheduled for August 7.

c) Copyright & Fair Use Town Meetings
The series of five Copyright & Fair Use Town Meetings funded by the Kress
Foundation and organized by the College Art Association in association with
the American Council of Learned Societies and NINCH concluded with a double
session at the CAA annual conference in February. NINCH has reported on
these meetings throughout and wrote a final report, due at the Kress
Foundation June 30th.  This report, together with a more interpretive
paper, "Themes in the Town Meetings," also submitted to Kress, are
available at
<http://www-ninch.cni.org/News/CurrentAnnounce/TownMeeting-FinalReport.html>
;
<http://www-ninch.cni.org/News/News/CurrentAnnounce/TownMeetingThemes2.html>
.

NINCH is coordinating the next series of 1998-99 Copyright Town Meetings
with an expanded group of sponsors: currently including, in addition to
ACLS and CAA, the Association of Research Libraries, the American
Association of University Presses, the American Association of Museums and
the Association of Art Museum Directors. A proposal is currently being
drafted and will be submitted to Kress this summer/fall.

D) Public-Private Collaboration
As an early step towards assembling a larger project on public-private
collaboration, NINCH was invited to participate in a joint Getty-CLIR-NINCH
publication of a manual of "best practices" in public-private
collaboration. On June 10 the basics of this were discussed via conference
call between Kathleen McDonnell, Deanna Marcum, Patti McClung and myself.


3. OTHER PROJECT MEETINGS

a) American Strategy
This initiative, spearheaded by the Getty Information Institute, the
Institute for Museum & Library Services and the American Association of
Museums, is designed to coordinate the presentation of digitized cultural
heritage resources by Federal agencies. It also aims to stimulate further
and greater digitization and the sharing of best practices between the
agencies. NINCH is represented on the steering committee of this group, and
I also sit on a working group tasked to assemble an inventory of digitized
cultural heritage collections in Federal agencies.  A planning meeting took
place June 3. A demonstration website is currently being assembled at
<http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/american/>: the Kennedy Center is
hosting both the demonstration site and the longer-term Gateway.  A first
step of the project is to assemble a Gateway page with searching across
agencies provided by the Getty's search technology. The eventual goal would
be a unified seamlessly searchable database.

The public launch of American Strategy is planned for the Fall of 1999

The Getty's Kathleen McDonnell will make a presentation of American
Strategy at a panel organized by NINCH at the Digital Resources conference
in Glasgow this September.

b) Committee on the Implementation of the U.S. National Moving Image
Preservation Plans: Cataloging Task Force
Partly as a result of my article on networking cultural heritage moving
images in the July-August 1997 issue of D-Lib magazine
<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july97/07green.html>, I was invited to co-chair
the cataloging task force of the national committee on implementing the
moving image preservation plans. The committee was formed to make
implementation recommendations for the two national plans on preservation,
published by the Library of Congress.

While the digitization and networking of film and video is currently not a
serious part of current moving image preservation strategies, the effective
description and cataloging of these resources is a pre-requisite both for
preservation and the eventual networking of these resources. The networking
of catalogs and finding aids is an important part of this strategy.

The Cataloging Task Force is working on strategies to: increase the
availability of information about moving image holdings for researchers and
the public;  assist those who hold moving images collections to increase
and improve their descriptive capabilities; make known the need for
increased funding for standardized cataloging.

As part of our evolving implementation plan, three interlinked
recommendations are clearly emerging: the development of a national union
catalog of moving image holdings; the development of a distributed
database, probably using a Z39.50 gateway to access online moving image
resources; and a cooperative project to coordinate a web directory of U.S.
moving image repositories. We are recommending commissioning a study to
determine the organizational structure and funding needed to create a
workable national union catalog.

This task force met for a day and a half in May and again for a day on June 26.

4. PUBLIC MEETINGS:
a) Copyright & the Public Good
This forum organized by the Center for Arts and Culture was reported on in
a Members Bulletin June 17 (available at
<http://www-ninch.cni.org/ADMIN/BULLETINS/Bulletins.html>).
b) American Studies Workshop for Teachers (Georgetown University) June 4.

5. PRIVATE MEETINGS
Mellon: Meeting with Richard Ekman sharing updates on Mellon and NINCH
programs. Interest on both; (6/15)
Columbia: David Millman--update on Columbia projects (6/15)
George Farr; Michael Lesk; Steve Griffin: on DLI-2 applications

6. CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
a) Americans for the Arts: "Internet Policy: The Art Part"
June 6, Denver, CO
Chaired by Ann Green; panelist: David Green, Kimber Craine, NASAA; XYZ,
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
Presentation on a panel on the arts and internet policy. For presentation
notes see < >

b) "Historians Online: The Context," in "Clio Wired: Electronic
Technologies and the Diplomatic Historian," Annual Conference of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, College Park,
Maryland.
I was asked to be the commentator on this society's first ever conference
session on digital resources.