----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Forwarded from the NINCH list. Judy -------------Forwarded Message----------------- From: INTERNET:[log in to unmask], INTERNET:[log in to unmask] To: Multiple recipients of list, INTERNET:[log in to unmask] Date: 3/11/99 10:19 AM RE: NINCH MEMBERS: February Director's Report Dear Members: Below is my report for February. For comments or corrections please e-mail me directly at . David ===== ........................................................................... NINCH MEMBERS BULLETIN FEBRUARY 1999 DIRECTOR'S REPORT 1. International: Meeting with Scandinavian Librarians; GAAC 2. Cultural Funding Briefing 3. Meetings With IMLS 4. Meeting with Pat Harris/NISO 5. Los Angeles: Copyright Town Meeting 6. Los Angeles: College Art Association Conference 7. Los Angeles: Visual Resources Association Conference 8. Los Angeles: Judy Mitoma & Gloria Werner 9: Projects Update: Database & NEH; Carnegie Corporation Meeting 10: Strategic Planning 11: March Calendar ........................................................................... 1. INTERNATIONAL: SCANDINAVIAN LIBRARIANS; GERMAN AMERICAN ACADEMIC COUNCIL Joan Lippincott (CNI) and I met with a group of 14 Scandinavian librarians, February 1, in the U.S. for the January ALA. Most interested in our programs was Kerstin Assarsson-Rizzi, head librarian of the Royal Academy in Sweden, who has a good understanding of the U.S. situation. We agreed to keep in touch. In October 1997, the National Humanities Center hosted a meeting with the German American Academic Council (GAAC) to outline a future exchange program, involving resident scholarships at the Center, with a focus on Information Technology and the Humanities. I attended as a representative of the ACLS. The GAAC representatives were impressed by the NINCH "Computing & the Humanities" Initiative and the report on our March 1997 Roundtable Meeting , organized by NINCH, CNI and the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. At the prompting of NHC President, Bob Connor, Chuck Henry and I meet March 19 with GAAC representative Elmar Mittler, University Librarian at Goettingen University, to explore projects that could be fashioned between GAAC and NINCH and its members. 2. CULTURAL FUNDING BRIEFING February 3, I was invited to attend a press briefing at the Office of the First Lady on the President's FY 2000 Cultural Funding Budget. Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Deputy Assistant to the President and Advisor to the First Lady on the Millennium, introduced and hosted the event, emphasizing the White House Millennium Council , its theme of "Honor the Past -- Imagine the Future," and the Save American Treasures initiative. L.G. Holstein, Interim Chief of the Office of Management & Budget presented an overview of the proposed $1 billion White House culture budget. Holstein mentioned the President's "Digital Library for Education," (proposing $10 million of new money to IMLS, $5 million each to the National Park Service and the Smithsonian and $10 million to NSF for a math/science 'library'), and the recent announcement by VP Gore of a Next Generation Supercomputing Program that would include an avenue for civilian use. In brief reviews of current program by the heads of the endowments and IMLS, information technology was not mentioned by William Ivey (NEA), was briefly itemized by Bill Ferris (NEH) and was noted as a critical factor in the future development of museums and libraries by Diane Frankel (IMLS). Frankel specifically mentioned programs to enable larger, more I.T.-experienced museums to coach smaller institutions and develop joint IT programs with them and to develop museum-library joint technology programs. 3. MEETINGS WITH IMLS In response to the President's budget proposing a new $10 million for IMLS for funding digitization projects, I was invited to speak to Diane Frankel and her staff, February 3, about issues to be considered in designing a program, should it be funded. In addition, on February 8, I met with Mamie Bittner (IMLS Director of Public & Legislative Affairs) to discuss ways that NINCH could help develop arguments for such funding and suggest people to give Congressional testimony. Diane Frankel will be testifying March 18th. We plan to continue these meetings. 4. PAT HARRIS/NISO February 17: a get-acquainted meeting with Patricia Harris, Executive Director of the National Information Standards Organization , which develops and promotes technical standards and is co-organizer of a meeting on Technical Metadata Elements for Image Files I'm attending April 18-19. During the meeting we covered: * NISO's relationship with other standards organizations (notably the American National Standards Institute, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Dept. of Commerce; * NISO's work in developing z39.50 and the Digital Object Identifier and NISO's new emphasis on gaining input from users, epecially through developmental workshops; * its recent Workshop on Linkage from Citations to Electronic Journal Literature (examining possible solutions to a range of complexities arising from an apparently simple activity); * its recent White Paper on "Issues in Crosswalking Content Metadata Standards" (on the need for the metadata created and maintained in one standard to be accessible via related content metadata standards); and * its active publications program, including a new "Bookshelf" web feature bringing together current important standards publications . 5. LOS ANGELES: COPYRIGHT TOWN MEETING Feb 11 Over 100 attended the Copyright Town Meeting I co-chaired at the College Art Association's 1999 conference in Los Angeles, February 11. The meeting was organized by NINCH & CAA to invite a broad range of questions for a Copyright Primer under development by CAA. Panelists were Jeff Cunard, CAA's legal counsel; Tyler Ochoa, Associate Professor at Whittier Law School; and Martha Kendall Winnacker, Executive Assistant for Planning and Policy Information Resources and Communications, University of California. Panelists gave brief introductions (Martha Winnacker on Distance Education; Tyler Ochoa on the Bridgeman v. Corel case (in which it was ruled that "exact photographic reproductions" of public domain works of art were not copyrightable) and Jeff Cunard on the practical implications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The panel took ten questions from the audience, many of which revolved around the Bridgeman case. A full report on the Town Meeting will be available shortly. (Note: for more on the Bridgeman case see "No Copyright for Art Photos Under Treaty," New York Law Journal ; Barry Szczesny also wrote a piece on the implications for museums in the February AVISO Newsletter). 6. LOS ANGELES: COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION MEETING Of the other CAA sessions I attended, the most interesting was "Transmissions: Engineering Interfaces to Distributed Art and Theory." Of the five papers, two are worth mentioning: a presentation on the Electronic Book Review by editor Joseph Tabbi (English Dept., Univ. of Illinois, Chicago) and designer Ann Burdick (CalArts), which builds an electronic archive of writing that addresses the electronic future of fiction, poetry, criticism, and the visual arts, where electronic text and design work hand-in-hand; and "The Transmodern Derive: Drifting Through Theory" by Marcos Novak of UCLA's Dept of Architecture and Urban Design, that reworked the situationists' philosophy in thinking through the practical aspects of designing new online spaces, such as navigable spatialized databases. (A recent Marcos paper on cyber-space is available as a response to the Walker Art Center's "Shock of the View" exhibit ). 7. LOS ANGELES: VISUAL RESOURCES ASSOCIATION Occuring simultaneously with the CAA conference was the conference of the Visual Resources Association. Highlights included the following six events: i) A conversation between myself and the VRA Board and its new officers. ii) "Changing World of Visual Resources: Where Will We Find Our Teaching Images?" In this session, visual resources curator Kathe Albrecht spoke on perceived barriers to using more digital images in educational institutions (few image databases available; perceived high cost; resistance to digital library licensing; different uses of images in teaching and for research; and high cost of equipment for projecting digital images in the classroom); Stephen Murray rehearsed his digital reconstruction of Amiens Cathedral as a teaching device ; and Thomas Trabitsch spoke of the digitization project at the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. iii) "Copyright & Image Management," an excellent talk by Georgia Harper (Office of General Counsel, University of Texas System) providing an overview of how fair use and case law affect campus use of both analog and digital images . Especially effective was her use of a particular scenario on the audience. Telling was her curiosity about how the cultural community *was* organizing itself, post-CONFU (see, for example, my own article, "CONFU Continues? Is it Time to Re-Group?" from May 1997.) iv) "Issues of Audience Access to Visual Materials." This was an extremely interesting presentation from four divisions of the Getty Trust on how they were broadening access to their own and others' collections: --Louis Marchesano, curator at the Research Institute described an ambitious plan to create links between its Photo Study Collection (2 million photographs, 60% not catalogued or indexed) its Special Collections (manuscripts, rare books, rare photos, prints, and drawings from 15th to 20th centuries) and its Library; --Julie Radoyce of the Conservation Institute spoke of its Visual Resource Management project that started in 1994 to organize its 100,000 images documenting conservation sites (with 1500 added each month). Now 75,000 slides are scanned (45,000 catalogued) and are available through a server built by Luna Imaging. An internal website will be available this month with plans for limited public access in the future. --Erin Coburn of the Museum spoke of ArtAccess, a touch screen program that enables the general public to take advantage of much of the information in the Museum's new collections management system, offering guidance to works in the collection both for those who know what they are looking for and those that do not. This involved defining subjects for general audiences to approach the collection (Science and Industry; Myth; The Natural World; Religion; People and Occupations; How We Live). There are plans afoot to bring this to the Web. --Jim Bowers, of the Information Institute, spoke of the Faces of L.A. project , a collaborative venture with 22 organizations creating a virtual database of two-and-a-half million images, sounds and texts. Bowers emphasized the approach of bringing many different collections together into the same virtual space for different audiences. The search engine combines results, using several different methods simultaneously. v) "Meeting the Research Needs of Scholars from CD to Web." From an account of using student labor to construct a CD of the collection of Oberlin College's art museum ; to Michael Ester's account of the comparative economics of producing and distributing high-quality images with extensive metadata for researchers (using his experience producing Luna Imaging's CD, "Frank Lloyd Wright: Presentation and Conceptual Drawings" ; through the Getty's Ben Davis emphasizing the continuing dynamic and complex interrelation between content and design in the move from print to CD to the Web of the Getty's publications; to an account of developing the electronic version of the Grove Dictionary of Art, there was a sense of the inevitability of the move from CD to the Web in publishing scholarly resources. vi) Last, and perhaps most interesting, was the session: "Collaboration on the Web: Digital Image Collections for Art and Architectural History." This presented several perspectives on the possibilities for building high-quality digital libraries of public domain images. Several examples of either individual or consortial services were given as a lead-in to a proposed broad new effort, the Art History Image Exchange, which would deal with copyright-cleared or public-domain images to be used principally for teaching. The proposed initial subject area would be in architecture. This has been adopted as a project by the Digital Library Federation and negotiations are underway with the College Art Association to define a role for CAA in the development of the Image Exchange. Other projects presented included the California State University Image Consortium (building a library of copyright-cleared digital images with metadata to support the teaching of the basic art history/architecture survey course required on 23 campuses): Allan Kohl's Art Images for College Teaching ; Jeff Howe's Digital Archive of American Architecture at Boston College ; and Mary Ann Sullivan's "Digital Image Collection" of sculpture and architectural images at Bluffton College, Ohio , most taken by herself over 20 years. The main proponent for the Art History Image Exchange has been Jeff Cohen at Bryn Mawr College. He has built a prototype for the Society of Architectural Historians, the SAH Image Exchange, a collection of public domain images of American architecture, 1850-99, mentioned in more than one of four survey textbooks currently in print . There was a particularly interesting discussion at the end, with David Bearman suggesting a complementary role between the proposed Art History Image Exchange and AMICO, in which they might work together on metadata and distribution issues. Bearman stressed the delicacy of using museum-owned images on a free "public domain" site, whcih made concentrating on architectural images a good way to start. 8. LOS ANGELES: UCLA--JUDY MITOMA and GLORIA WERNER While in Los Angeles for the CAA and VRA conferences, I met with Judy Mitoma, recent chair of the Dept of World Arts & Culture (1992-1997) and now director of the Center for Intercultural Performance and of the UCLA National Dance/Media project. Mitoma came to my attention while I was writing my article on moving images online ("Beyond Word and Image" ) as a leader in both developing the use of media by the dance world and being aware of the urgency of its preservation. The Pew-funded Dance/Media project encourages better dance documentation by offering training, research and leadership activities (which include an annual leadership conference and a fellowship program focusing on film, video and new media training. (See her quote at the conclusion of my essay). I am very interested in the work she is doing with dance and media that actively includes computing. Working with her is Andrew Gordon, a young computer scientist working on analyzing and retrieving images from digitized videotape that can be integrated into education. His goal is to develop an online video archive of dance performance, criticism, and advice that could be used to support dance education programs. Mitoma was especially interested in our "Building Blocks" project in determining the needs of practitioners within specific academic fields as they work with their raw materials, as a precursor to engaging computer scientists in providing the tools and environments that will more closely serve those needs. Gloria Werner, UCLA University Librarian also participated in this generative meeting that produced a number of leads in tying together some conceptually related but otherwise unconnected projects across campus. Mitoma should prove a valuable resource for the Performance component of our Building Blocks project. 9. PROJECTS UPDATE * DATABASE: I met with George Farr and Helen Aguera at NEH about the Endowment supplying us with data on its funded digital projects for the last 3 years. This data should be delivered for further research and input into our prototype by Rice and Michigan by mid-April. * COMPUTER SCIENCE & THE HUMANITIES: Chuck Henry, Stan Katz and William Wulf had a successful first meeting with Vartan Gregorian at the Carnegie Corporation about his interest in this suite of projects, including the Conference series and Building Blocks. While in Los Angeles, I met with Jack Meyers at the Getty Grant program, who expressed interest in assisting the Building Blocks proposal. * BEST PRACTICES: the listserv discussion and website is proceeding . A conference call is being scheduled for late March. Jack Meyers at the Getty is also interested in receiving a proposal before July 1. 10. STRATEGIC PLANNING The Advocacy Working Group met Feb 19; a combined report of the Advocacy and Strategic Planning Working Groups is being considered by the Strategic Planning Group in March for a March 24th conference call. 11. MARCH CALENDAR March 10: Announcement of DLI-2 Grant winners expected March 11-14: Museums & the Web conference, New Orleans March 16: Meet with Hugo Paulisson from the Netherlands March 18: Possible Best practice conference call Diane Frankel Congressional testimony March 19: Meet with Chuck Henry and Elmar Mittler (GAAC) March 24: Strategic Planning Working Group COnference Call March 26-27: NSF Workshop on Data Archival and Information Preservation March 26-27: New Challenges for Scholarly Communication in the Digital Era: Changing Roles and Expectations in the Academic Community =============================================================================== ====== =============================================================== David L. Green Executive Director NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR A NETWORKED CULTURAL HERITAGE 21 Dupont Circle, NW Washington DC 20036 [log in to unmask] 202/296-5346 202/872-0886 fax