Digitization@METRO

METRO Copyright Symposium (Sold Out)

Richard Kim — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:15:00 -0500

Updated on Feb 5, 2007

Program change: Unfortunately, Maria Pallante, Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Copyright Office will no longer be able to participate in the morning panel session. Fortunately, we were able to secure an excellent replacement in Rina Elster Pantalony, Legal Counsel, Library and Archives of Canada, Department of Justice, Canada.

What: METRO Symposium - Copyright: The Only Certainty is Uncertainty.
When: February 15, 2007, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Where: Baruch College Conference Center
151 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 (map)
Fee: $69 members and $99 nonmembers (Sold Out)

Click here to register (Registration is now closed)

The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) will host a symposium titled Copyright: The Only Certainty is Uncertainty on February 15, 2007 at the Baruch College Conference Center in New York City. This day long event will address numerous copyright concerns in libraries, especially in relation to digitization. A reception will follow the day’s activities.

Funding for this symposium is provided in part by Federal Library Services and Technology Act funds awarded to the New York State Library by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Schedule of Events

8:30 AM - 9:30 AM Registration

9:30 AM - 9:40 AM Welcome

9:40 AM - 10:20 AM Keynote

On the Cluelessness of Professors: Why Your Faculty Does Not Get Copyright
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Associate Professor of Culture and Communication at New York University

10:20 AM - 11:00 AM Keynote

Is Copyright Still Relevant to the Work of Libraries? A Report From the Frontlines of the Intellectual Property Wars
James Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian of Columbia University Libraries

11:00 AM - 11:15 AM Break

11:15 AM - 12:30 PM Panel

How Copyright Law Curtails Access and What That Means For Libraries
Panelists will consider various topics on how existing copyright law curtails access and the implications it may have for libraries. Topics may include Orphan Works, Document Delivery in Libraries, E-Reserves, and Section 512 of the DMCA (Safe Harbor Provision).

Peter Hirtle, Intellectual Property Officer, Cornell University
Rina Elster Pantalony, Legal Counsel, Library and Archives of Canada, Department of Justice, Canada
Laura Quilter, Associate Counsel for the Brennan Center, New York University School of Law
Liz Bishoff (moderator), Assistant to the Dean, University of Colorado at Boulder

12:30 PM - 1:45 PM Lunch (on your own)

1:45 PM - 3:00 PM Panel

Public Domain: To © Or Not To ©?
Panelists will tackle the complicated issue of libraries, archives, and museums that assert copyright over digital reproductions of public domain materials.

Susan Chun, General Manager for Collections Information Planning, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Kenneth Hamma, Executive Director, Digital Policy & Initiatives, J. Paul Getty Trust
Jason Mazzone, Assistant Professor, Brooklyn Law School
James Shulman, Executive Director, ARTstor
Liz Bishoff (moderator), Assistant to the Dean, University of Colorado at Boulder

3:00 PM -3:45 PM Breakout Sessions
(Note: The breakout sessions will be presented concurrently and you will be contacted after registering for the conference to determine your preference. Although we will do our best to accommodate your preference, there is a possibility that your preferred breakout session will not be available. Early registrants will receive priority.)

Copyright 101
A crash course introduction to copyright law for librarians.
Peter Hirtle, Intellectual Property Officer, Cornell University

Creative Commons 101
An introduction to the Creative Commons as an alternative to traditional copyright and licensing schemes.
Fred Benenson, Creative Commons Fellow and founder of Free Culture @ NYU.

3:45 PM - 4:30 PM Reception

Presenter Bios

Fred Benenson
While studying Philosophy and Computer Science, Fred co-founded the Free Culture @ NYU chapter of FreeCulture.org, an international student movement and is currently serves on the board. After graduating from NYU in 2005, he interned at Creative Commons in San Francisco and then moved back to NYC to stage the first-of-their-kind DRM protests, and organize several other related public events, all receiving national media attention. During the summer of 2006 Fred was the Creative Commons Cultural Fellow and worked with organizations, schools, and major art institutions in New York to help shape their copyright policies through the use of Creative Commons licenses. He regularly travels the country to speak on these topics and is currently working on his masters at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He spends his spare time with the Rubik's cube, bicycles, and cameras.

Liz Bishoff
Liz Bishoff is Special Assistant to the Dean of Libraries and Head of the Office of Sponsored Programs, University of Colorado-Boulder Library. Previously she was Vice President for Digital Collection Services at OCLC, and former Executive Director of the Colorado Digitization Program. Liz has worked with libraries and museums in several states including Alabama, Kansas, South and North Carolina, Missouri, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Tennessee on various aspects of their collaborative digitization initiatives. Liz led the development of collaborative best practices in metadata, including the Western States Metadata Dublin Core Best Practices.

Currently Liz is working with the Northeast Document Conservation Center on the development of Digital Preservation Readiness Assessment survey and manual. Through this work Liz and several colleagues have visited and interviewed museums, historical societies, and libraries of various sizes gathering current status and trends in digital preservation trends and approaches.

Bishoff has been a faculty for the NEDCC School for Scanning program. Liz holds an MLS from Rosary College, and has post-graduate work in public administration at Roosevelt University.

Susan Chun
Susan Chun is General Manager for Collections Information Planning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kenneth Hamma
Kenneth Hamma is Executive Director for Digital Policy and Initiatives at the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles. He oversees the management of the Getty Trust Office of Insitutional Research, the Getty website, as well as strategic planning for information management across Getty programs including the Museum, Research Institute, Conservation Institute and Foundation.

He currently serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Networked Information; member of the advisory council for RLG Programs of OCLC; director of the Museum Domain Management Association, the sponsor of the museum TLD; and member of the advisory board of the American Association of Museum’s Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal. He has previously served as board member for the Art Museum Image Consortium, the Consortium for the Interchange of Museum Information, and the National Initiative for Networked Cultural Heritage. He has also served as a member of the User Advisory Board for Gallery Systems and as advisor to EU project Artiste and board member for EU project musEnic.

He was from 1996 to 2004 Assistant Director and from 1987 to 1996 Associate Curator of Antiquities at the Getty Museum.

Peter B. Hirtle
Peter Hirtle is the Intellectual Property Officer for the Cornell University Library. He also serves as the Technology Strategist for the Library’s Public Services and Assessment Unit. Previously, he served as Director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections where he explored the use of emerging technologies to expand access to cultural and scientific sources through the development and management of distinctive digital collections. He is a Fellow and Past President of the Society of American Archivists, and chairs its Working Group on Intellectual Property. He was also a member of the Commission on Preservation and Access/Research Library Group's Task Force on Digital Archiving and the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage's Working Group on Best Practices in Networking Cultural Heritage. A current member of the Copyright Office’s Section 108 Study Group, Hirtle is also a contributing author to the LibraryLaw.com blog.

Jason Mazzone
Jason Mazzone is Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School where he began his teaching career in 2003. Professor Mazzone teaches Constitutional Law, American Legal History and Criminal Procedure.

Mazzone is the author of Copyfraud, 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1026 (2006). The article argues that copyfraud—false claims to copyright in public domain materials—results in unnecessary payments for lawful reproductions and undermines creative expression. The article proposes changes to copyright law to deter the now common practice of copyfraud.

Mazzone received his A.B. and J.D. from Harvard University. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from Stanford University. He received the degrees of Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Doctor of the Science of Laws (J.S.D.) from Yale Law School. His dissertation, Organizing the Republic: Civic Associations and American Constitutionalism, 1780-1830, examines the role of early civic associations in creating a constitutional culture, and it is being revised for publication as a book.

James G. Neal
Jim Neal is currently the Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University, providing leadership for university academic computing and a system of twenty-five libraries. Previously, he served as the Dean of University Libraries at Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, and held administrative positions in the libraries at Penn State, Notre Dame, and the City University of New York. At Columbia, he has focused in particular on the development of the digital library, special collections, global resources, instructional technology, building construction/renovation, and fundraising programs.

Neal has represented the American library community in testimony on copyright matters before Congressional committees and was an advisor to the U.S. delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference on copyright. He has worked on copyright policy and advisory groups for universities and for professional and higher education associations.

Rina Elster Pantalony
Rina Elster Pantalony, an intellectual property lawyer with the Canadian Justice Department, has worked on copyright and digital matters for the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canadian Heritage Information Network and the Virtual Museum of Canada since 1994. In 2001, she was named intellectual property counsel to a joint Internet venture between the Tate Modern and The Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Pantalony returned to the Canadian Department of Justice in 2002 as legal counsel to the Virtual Museum of Canada and is now legal counsel to the Library and Archives of Canada, carrying out her responsibilities from New York.

She is faculty at the Tisch School for the Arts, New York University where she teaches copyright law and policy in the Moving Image and Archive Preservation Program, a graduate program in the Department of Cinema Studies. She has published and spoken extensively on intellectual property issues affecting cultural heritage and will be publishing a book about intellectual property management for cultural heritage institutions with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Laura Quilter
Laura Quilter, Associate Counsel in the Brennan Center Democracy Program, practices in the field of copyright and information law. Before joining the Brennan Center, she was a private consultant and a fellow at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. Laura's research and practice particularly focuses on the rights of information users, including consumers, libraries, creators, and scientists. She earned her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, in 2003, and her library science degree from the University of Kentucky in 1993.

James Shulman
James Shulman serves as the Executive Director of ARTstor - a non-profit that provides 500,000 images, software, and services to over 650 colleges, universities, museums, and schools. Prior to developing ARTstor, he worked at the Mellon Foundation for 10 years, writing about educational policy issues and the missions of not-for-profit institutions, and working in a range of research, administrative, and investment capacities. He collaborated with William G. Bowen and Derek Bok on The Shape of the River: Long-term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (1998) and wrote (with William Bowen) The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (2001). From 1997-2002, he assisted in the management of the Foundation's endowment and internal budgeting.

Mr. Shulman received his BA and Ph.D. from Yale in Renaissance Studies. His dissertation was published as The Pale Cast of Thought: Hesitation and Decision in the Renaissance Epic. He also has written the introduction to Robert K. Merton's The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity.

Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar, is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). Vaidhyanathan has written for many periodicals, including American Scholar, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Magazine, MSNBC.COM, Salon.com, openDemocracy.net, and The Nation. After five years as a professional journalist, Vaidhyanathan earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison , Columbia University, and is currently an associate professor of Culture and Communication at New York University and a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. He lives in Greenwich Village, USA.

Brooklyn Museum

Richard Kim — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:16:46 -0500

The Brooklyn Museum recently launched a digital collection titled The Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn Museum: Spanning Art and History, which was funded in part with a METRO Digitization Grant in 2006.

Institution: Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives
Collection: The Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn Museum: Spanning Art and History
Description: The Brooklyn Bridge, an instantly identifiable symbol of both Brooklyn and New York City, has long served as an inspiration for people from all walks of life. Artists, artisans, and photographers, both professionals and amateurs, have documented and interpreted the structure and the city around it. This digital collection comprises works of art from the Brooklyn Museum's collections and unique visual materials from the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives. Interpretive essays from the 1983 Brooklyn Museum exhibition catalogue The Great East River Bridge, 1883–1983 are also presented.

Make sure to also check out the Community link, which allows users to submit their own pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge to the Brooklyn Museum website via Flickr.

Great job by Deborah Wythe and everyone at Brooklyn Museum who worked on the project.

Image: Samuel Halpert (American, 1884–1930). View of Brooklyn Bridge, n.d. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Benjamin Halpert, 54.15

Spring 2007 Digitization Training

Richard Kim — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 10:03:41 -0500

METRO recently launched its Spring 2007 Digitization Training Schedule.

For more information and to register click on a class or go to www.metro.org

Jan 22, 2007 - Introduction to Scanning
Feb 9, 2007 - Introduction to Metadata
Feb 15, 2007 - Copyright: The Only Certainty is Uncertainty
Feb 28, 2007 - Planning and Managing a Digitization Project
Mar 9, 2007 - Site Visit: NYU Digital Imaging and Video Lab
Mar 15-16, 2007 - Knowledge Organization Systems
Mar 20, 2007 - Grant Writing for Digitization and Preservation Projects

These digitization workshops are supported in part by Federal Library Services and Technology Act Funds, awarded to the New York State Library by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

BPL Collection: Sheet Music

Richard Kim — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 10:59:56 -0500

Brooklyn Public Library recently launched their latest digital collection titled Illustrated Covers from the Brooklyn Sheet Music Collection, which was funded in part with a METRO Digitization Grant in 2006.

Institution: Brooklyn Public Library (BPL)
Collection: Illustrated Covers from the Brooklyn Sheet Music Collection
Description: The Brooklyn Sheet Music Collection consists of 102 pieces of sheet music from 1869 to 1987, primarily for voice and piano, all celebrating or emanating from the borough of Brooklyn. Contents include marches written in honor of a local person or business, pieces celebrating the whole or a part of the borough, songs from shows and movies set in or about Brooklyn, and pieces from Brooklyn's early 20th-century Yiddish-language theater.

Once again BPL leveraged their other digital collections by linking these sheet music covers to related content from both their Fulton Street Trade Cards Collection and Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Here's a good example.

Nice job by Susan Benz and everyone at Brooklyn Public Library who worked on the project.

Frick Art Reference Library

Richard Kim — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:53:01 -0500

METRO and a group of eleven members paid a site visit to the Frick Art Reference Library's Digital Lab on November 16, 2006. Don Swanson and his staff talked about their work, demonstrated equipment, answered questions, and left me and others quite impressed with their operation.

The Frick is currently working with ARTstor to digitize thousands of glass plate negatives and interpositives. The glass plate negatives are scanned in-house using a Better Light scanning back and interpositives are sent to an outside vendor for conversion.

The Frick captures materials at 900 dpi, 16 bit grayscale, which results in a file size of around 120 MB.

The scans are then saved to (1) local hard drive (2) cds (3) network server (offsite) and (4) tape (offsite). In addition, the original glass plate negatives are saved in acid free folders and put in cold storage. Four backup copies of the digital image, using four storage formats, saved in three different physical locations, and retention of the original. That's pretty darn good.

These images are available via ARTstor.

In addition to giving us a tour of the digital lab, Don showed us the conservation department where the staff was meticulously piecing together the bindings of old books, the spotless stacks (not even a speck of dust), and the beautiful reading room.

Thanks to Don, everyone at the Frick, and all who attended.

Image: Helen Clay Frick (and dog) c. 1918, scanned from a spoiling nitrate negative

8.6 Gigapixels - Wow!

Richard Kim — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:23:00 -0500

An Italian company, HAL9000, claims to have created the world's largest digital image measuring 8.6 gigapixels.

The image is of a fresco painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari known as the Vito di Cristo in 1513 which depicts the life of Jesus Christ in 21 pictures. The original fresco measured over 750 square feet.

While the technological achievement is incredible, I am left completely humbled by the attention to detail paid by the artist. Everywhere you zoom, you see something that amazes.

Taxonomy vs Folksonomy

Richard Kim — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:11:15 -0500

The November 2006 issue of D-Lib includes a commentary by Elaine Peterson, Associate Professor/Information Resources Specialist, Montana State University titled Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy where she challenges the usefulness of folksonomy as a classification tool.

The author discusses several issues she has with folksonomy and concludes that "a traditional classification scheme will consistently provide better results to information seekers."

Want to learn more about folksonomy? Then come join us at METRO for this upcoming program.

Event: Steve@METRO
What: Steve is a social tagging and folksonomy project initiated in order to explore the potential for user-generated subject descriptions of works of art in museum collections. Come learn about the Steve Project and network with your colleagues at the wine and cheese reception.
When: December 6, 2006; 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Fee: No charge but seating is limited and registration is required.
To register for this program click here.

CLOCKSS@METRO Recap

Richard Kim — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:46:26 -0500

A VERY LARGE crowd (50+), by METRO standards anyway, attended yesterday's CLOCKSS@METRO event which was co-sponsored by our friends at the New York Public Library.

CLOCKSS or Controlled LOCKSS or Controlled Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe (try saying that three times fast) is a not-for-profit community partnership among publishers and libraries that is developing a distributed, validated, comprehensive archive that preserves and ensures continuing access to electronic scholarly content.

It was a huge honor to have Victoria Reich, Director, LOCKSS Program, Stanford University Libraries, come all the way from California to explain CLOCKSS and LOCKSS to our members. If I had to choose one word to describe her presentation, it would be candid.

You can find a lot of information about CLOCKSS and LOCKSS on their website so I'm going to just add a couple of notes that I jotted down.

You could really tell that Vicky cherishes and values the role that libraries play in preservation. She noted how print libraries served as a great model of preservation and were both resistant to attacks and were self healing and that these two principles were carried over to LOCKSS and CLOCKSS.

Another thing that struck me was her comment about the unintended consequences of libraries which no longer build their collections but instead just rely on resources available on the internet. She equated those types of libraries to coffee shops with internet access.

The final thing I have in my notes is to remember to send Vicky the cat jumping photos. Done.

Thanks again to Vicky Reich and David Rosenthal from Stanford University for presenting, Barbara Taranto of NYPL for the idea and co-sponsoring, METRO's Deidre Hoguet for organizing, and all who attended.

LACUNY Digital Projects Workshop

Richard Kim — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:16:18 -0500

I would like to thank the folks at LACUNY (Library Association of the City University of New York) for inviting me to a program titled Digital Projects Within CUNY Libraries, Archives, And Special Collections. The program was presented by the LACUNY Archives & Special Collections Roundtable and held at Baruch College on November 10, 2006.

The program included a keynote presentation titled Digitization 101: The Essentials by Claudia Perry, a professor at Queens College GSLIS. I was glad to hear Claudia emphasize the importance of documenting your project - an area that often gets overlooked. I'm a big fan of the blog as a tool for documenting digital projects. I also liked this nugget of advice she gave to those planning their first digitization project - which is to keep things simple.

It was also nice to hear the presentations by METRO Digitization Grant recipients Ellen Belcher and Ellen Sexton of John Jay College who are hard at work on their Crime in New York 1800-1950 project and Janet Munch of Lehman College who showed off their Bronx Business for Everybody collection.

One thing I noticed during the spirited Q&A and discussion was that confusion abounds when it comes to copyright issues and so I hope that the LACUNY community will register for METRO's upcoming symposium Copyright: The Only Certainty is Uncertainty on February 15, 2007.

NYPL: Early Real Estate Insurance Maps of New York

Richard Kim — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:39:22 -0500

When most people see a map like this the first thing that comes to mind for them is that it's a Sanborn, which has become synonomous with this style of fire insurance map. But in this case they would be wrong because this is a Perris map created by William Perris, "an English-trained civil engineer and surveyor who originated the format."

Thanks to a digitization grant from METRO in 2005, the New York Public Library was able to digitize over two hundred of these Early Real Estate Insurance Maps of New York and Brooklyn from the 1850s-1860s.

This particular map is of interest to me because it's the exact block (circa 1860) where METRO resides today. And just for fun here's what it looks like in the Google.

Over at the NYPL Digital Gallery, you can use their pan & zoom functionality to see the names of the buildings and the types of businesses that existed back then. Hmm, let's see. There's the New York Society Library which dates back to 1754 over on 13th and University, and over yonder is my favorite Livery Stable on 14th and 4th, and you gotta love the Druggist next to the Coal Yards on 11th and Broadway. And wait a second what do I see over on 12th and 4th? A Starbucks!

Great job by Barbara Taranto, Janet Murray, Matt Knutzen, and everyone else at NYPL who worked on the project.