CAA News Today
Getty Closing the Bibliography of the History of Art at the End of March
posted by Christopher Howard — March 25, 2010
CAA learned last week, through the Art History Newsletter, that the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles is withdrawing the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) from distribution on March 31, 2010. With the closing, hundreds of thousands of records and abstracts in the database will soon be unavailable to scholars worldwide—indefinitely.
Subscribers to BHA, which include many academic libraries and research institutions, received notice about the shutdown from the Getty earlier this month. While there are some alternatives—among them Art Index, Avery Index, and ARTbibliographies Modern—the loss of this invaluable resource is immense and will be deeply felt throughout the international art-history community. Indeed, BHA’s “coverage has not been duplicated in any single database available to us,” writes Jill E. Luedke, a librarian and art-subject specialist at Temple University.
Since June CAA has made numerous communiqués by phone and email to the Getty regarding the demise of BHA, receiving only one inconclusive response. From what CAA can gather from other sources, the closure appears to be strictly a budgetary decision. The Getty attempted to find an organization that would purchase the database and software program that they had developed, but found none. CAA was not privy to the negotiations to find a buyer.
As the world’s most comprehensive bibliographic database of publications in art history, BHA covers the visual arts in Europe and America from late antiquity to the present. Copublished with the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique in France, BHA originated in part as the International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA), created in 1972 under the auspices of CAA and supported by grants from public endowments and private foundations. The Getty’s bibliography includes RILA records from 1972 to 1989 and those from the Repertory of Art and Archaeology (RAA) from 1973 to 1989, and had been growing ever since.
Michael Rinehart, formerly editor in chief of RILA and BHA for nearly thirty years, wrote in 2009: “It is highly unlikely that any commercial vendor will want to maintain it. It is equally clear that the Getty intends to end BHA with or without a plan for its continuation…. Whatever the original understanding between the CAA and the Getty may have been, it is self-evident that the CAA entrusted RILA to the Getty in the expectation that it would continue.”
Art historians and researchers were first alerted to the possible closure in June 2009, and CAA published a response at that time. The Getty released a statement in the same month, but negotiations with other organizations, as noted above, failed to produce a solution to keep BHA alive.
Voice Your Opinions on Copyright-Infringement Issues and Federal Law
posted by Christopher Howard — March 18, 2010
The Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), a federal agency in the Executive Office of the President, seeks opinions on how the federal government should enforce copyrights and handle infringements. In a two-part survey, IPEC not only solicits written submissions about economic costs associated with intellectual-property violations, but also requests specific recommendations on how such violations can be dealt with. All comments should be sent by email.
Public Knowledge, a digital-issues interest group based in Washington, DC, writes, “The request for comments seems geared to take in complaints from big media companies and other major holders of copyrights, patents, and trademarks,” but also that it is “open to everyday consumers, citizens, and members of the public.”
An area that art historians may wish to address, for example, is the way that copyright controls on images have made it difficult for electronic texts to include copyrighted art images. For artists, an area of concern is the high cost of registering copyright in a visual image, and lack of good bulk registration tools at the US Copyright Office for visual-image rights holders.
Read more about the issue on the Public Knowledge website, which also includes a sample letter that you can tailor to your needs. Deadline: 5:00 PM on March 24, 2010.
Voice Your Opinions on Copyright-Infringement Issues and Federal Law
posted by Christopher Howard — March 18, 2010
The Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), a federal agency in the Executive Office of the President, seeks opinions on how the federal government should enforce copyrights and handle infringements. In a two-part survey, IPEC not only solicits written submissions about economic costs associated with intellectual-property violations, but also requests specific recommendations on how such violations can be dealt with. All comments should be sent by email.
Public Knowledge, a digital-issues interest group based in Washington, DC, writes, “The request for comments seems geared to take in complaints from big media companies and other major holders of copyrights, patents, and trademarks,” but also that it is “open to everyday consumers, citizens, and members of the public.”
An area that art historians may wish to address, for example, is the way that copyright controls on images have made it difficult for electronic texts to include copyrighted art images. For artists, an area of concern is the high cost of registering copyright in a visual image, and lack of good bulk registration tools at the US Copyright Office for visual-image rights holders.
Read more about the issue on the Public Knowledge website, which also includes a sample letter that you can tailor to your needs. Deadline: 5:00 PM on March 24, 2010.
JSTOR Creating Database for Auction Catalogues
posted by Christopher Howard — March 02, 2010
JSTOR is collaborating with two New York museums—the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art—in a pilot project designed to understand how auction catalogues can be best preserved for the long term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. Vital for provenance research, auction catalogues are used for the study of art markets and the history of collecting.
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JSTOR’s prototype site is open to the public through June 2010. If you are interested in this content and its importance to art research, please explore the site and take the brief survey. In June, JSTOR will evaluate use of the content and feedback it has received in order to help determine the future of the resource.
The Frick Art Reference Library Opens Two New Online Databases
posted by Christopher Howard — February 23, 2010
The Frick Art Reference Library in New York has launched two new online resources that are available to scholars free of charge. The first, called the Archives Directory, is a directory that helps those researching the history of collecting art in the United States. The second, the Montias Database, is a collection of inventories from the Dutch Golden Age.
Inge Reist, director for the Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting in America, says, “Such a consolidated and easily searched online source as the new Archives Directory will prove invaluable to this deepening field of study and will ensure that researchers can locate primary documents such as letters, bills of sale, and other transaction records that are so essential to reliable scholarship. Indeed, users will more readily find their way to all manner of repositories, from those that are well-known to utterly unexpected caches, which in turn may lead to new discoveries and inspire fresh perspectives.”
Archives Directory
The center’s Archives Directory, the first online database of its kind, consolidates a wealth of information about the location and nature of documents and archives available on American collectors. Until now, scholars have had to comb through multiple websites and, if permitted, sift through analogue data held at library, museum, and university archives to construct their own plans for research—a time-consuming and imprecise process. The new directory is, by contrast, accessible around the clock via the institution’s website. Its use will help scholars worldwide as they approach research projects, guiding them beyond existing publications and standard paths to overlooked repositories, including primary source materials.
The Archives Directory guides researchers to more than 5,000 collections held in more than 300 repositories worldwide, which together have bearing on the lives and activities of more than 1,500 American collectors. Information in the Archives Directory was culled from various online and printed materials ranging from federated and individual online library catalogues to Google Books to published literature in the field.
Contributions of additional information for the directory are welcomed by scholars and researchers, so that it will continue to grow and become an increasingly valued resource.
Montias Database of 17th Century Dutch Art Inventories
The complete Montias Database, cosponsored by the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, offers an unprecedented look at ownership of art in Holland during the seventeenth century. It is a trove of searchable information about buyers, sellers, and prices, including comprehensive information on over 50,000 objects (paintings, prints, sculpture, furniture, and so forth) listed in nearly 1,300 Amsterdam city inventories. Approximately half was created in preparation for auctions, almost an equal portion was notarial death inventories for estate purposes, and the remaining documents relate to bankruptcy cases. Although the database, which specifically addresses records from 1597 through 1681, is not a complete record of all inventories made in Amsterdam, it contains a vast amount of information that can elucidate patterns of buying, selling, inventorying, and collecting art.
An eminent economist at Yale University, John Michael Montias began recording details of ownership of works of art from inventories held in the Amsterdam municipal archive, or Geementearchief (now known as the Stadsarchief), in the early 1980s as part of his own work on the prices of Dutch paintings at seventeenth-century auctions.
Digital Book Publishing Still a Moving Target
posted by Christopher Howard — February 05, 2010
Respondents to a recent survey on digital book publishing, produced by the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), say that digital book publishing is still a moving target, naming metadata bottlenecks, third-party vendors, and rights issues over images as major concerns.
The report, “Digital Publishing in the AAUP Community Survey Report: Winter 2009–2010,” shares responses to seven questions specifically about digital strategies, technologies, and concerns related to their book-publishing programs. The survey also collected new and updated information on specific e-publishing programs at member presses in order to update the association’s online directory of such projects.
According to the report, university presses are increasingly working to provide print-on-demand services for new and old titles, as well as partnering with digital aggregators such as Google Books for Publishers (91.5% of respondents), Amazon’s Search Inside the Book (76.3%), and Barnes and Noble See Inside (39%).
About 96.5% of AAUP member presses are working with the PDF, and 31.6% and 29.8% respectively using AZW (for Kindle) and EPUB formats. Many presses currently offer excerpts and chapters of books on their websites, and some have entire books available online.
Rescue Public Murals Seeks Photographs for Digital Archive
posted by Christopher Howard — February 04, 2010
Rescue Public Murals invites artists and arts organizations to contribute photographs of American outdoor murals, to be deposited in a special collection in the ARTstor Digital Library and made available for educational use.
The images in the Rescue Public Murals (Heritage Preservation) collection will serve as a valuable record of murals in the United States and place them in the context of other works in the arts, architecture, and humanities. Your photographs can join the more than five thousand catalogued mural photographs already contributed by Rescue Public Murals cochair, Timothy Drescher.
Images may be submitted online and should be high-resolution TIFF or JPEG files at 3,000 pixels on one side. Assistance is also available to scan slides. The online submission site includes fields to complete with identifying information about the mural, including artist name, title, date, location, medium, dimensions, photographer, and copyright information. Rescue Public Murals staff will facilitate their inclusion in ARTstor by providing cataloging and technical assistance.
Submissions are accepted until March 31, 2010. Artists and arts organizations that are considering submissions can email Kristen Laise or call 202-233-0824 for more information.
In 2006, Heritage Preservation launched Rescue Public Murals, an initiative to bring public attention to US murals, document their unique artistic and historic contributions, and secure the expertise and support to save them. While much of the effort is focused on the physical preservation of community murals, it is inevitable that some important murals will not survive. As another means of preserving this distinctive American art form, Rescue Public Murals also collects photographs and archival documentation related to murals.
Funding for this project comes from the Getty Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. Rescue Public Murals has also received support from the Booth Heritage Foundation, Friends of Heritage Preservation, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
Rescue Public Murals Seeks Photographs for Archive
posted by Christopher Howard — February 04, 2010
Rescue Public Murals invites artists and arts organizations to contribute photographs of American outdoor murals, to be deposited in a special collection in the ARTstor Digital Library and made available for educational use.
The images in the Rescue Public Murals (Heritage Preservation) collection will serve as a valuable record of murals in the United States and place them in the context of other works in the arts, architecture, and humanities. Your photographs can join the more than five thousand catalogued mural photographs already contributed by Rescue Public Murals cochair, Timothy Drescher.
Images may be submitted online and should be high-resolution TIFF or JPEG files at 3,000 pixels on one side. Assistance is also available to scan slides. The online submission site includes fields to complete with identifying information about the mural, including artist name, title, date, location, medium, dimensions, photographer, and copyright information. Rescue Public Murals staff will facilitate their inclusion in ARTstor by providing cataloging and technical assistance.
Submissions are accepted until March 31, 2010. Artists and arts organizations that are considering submissions can email Kristen Laise or call 202-233-0824 for more information.
In 2006, Heritage Preservation launched Rescue Public Murals, an initiative to bring public attention to US murals, document their unique artistic and historic contributions, and secure the expertise and support to save them. While much of the effort is focused on the physical preservation of community murals, it is inevitable that some important murals will not survive. As another means of preserving this distinctive American art form, Rescue Public Murals also collects photographs and archival documentation related to murals.
Funding for this project comes from the Getty Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. Rescue Public Murals has also received support from the Booth Heritage Foundation, Friends of Heritage Preservation, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
Streaming-Video Debate Positions a Media Trade Group against UCLA
posted by Christopher Howard — February 04, 2010
The Association for Information and Media Equipment, a group of educational film and video producers and distributors dealing with copyright issues related to libraries, universities, and media centers, has threatened to sue the University of California, Los Angeles for streaming copyrighted video content on course websites. UCLA is claiming fair use, but the issue—involving royalty payments, academic-subsidized research, and current copyright law—is much more complex.
Steve Kolowich of Inside Higher Ed reports that negotiations between the organization and the school are private, and a debate about the legality of libraries making digital copies of DVDs it owns for wider dissemination to students has arisen. In his article Kolowich talks to librarians, professors, and media-industry experts to provide a larger, if not clearer, picture of what is at stake.
February 5 update: J. B. DeVries of Academic Impressions discusses policy issues when dealing with streaming video.
Opt-Out Deadline for Google Book Settlement Approaching
posted by Christopher Howard — January 20, 2010
Following the submission of the amended Google Book Settlement in November 2009, the deadline for opting out was extended. The new deadline is January 28, 2010 (postmarked or submitted online on or before that date).
Those who had not opted out of the settlement may still do so, and those who had opted out may now opt in, if they so wish. If you wish to maintain your previous status, you need not do anything. (Under a class-action settlement, all class members remain in the class unless they opt out.)
Opt-out forms (to mail in) and instructions for opting out online are available at the settlement website. You may also read the settlement FAQ for more information.