CAA News Today
Baruch College Creates Interactive Guide for Teachers Using Copyrighted Materials
posted by Christopher Howard — June 25, 2009
Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY), together with Kognito Solutions, has recently released the Interactive Guide to Using Copyrighted Media in Your Courses. This online tutorial helps college and university faculty determine the appropriate guidelines to follow when using different types of copyrighted media in their courses.
While US copyright law has traditionally allowed for “fair use” for teachers who display and perform copyrighted media during face-to-face teaching, copyright compliancy has become an increasingly complex legal issue as media are increasingly delivered to students online.
Structured as a subway map, the interactive guide asks teachers a series of questions about the nature of the copyrighted works they want to use and how they plan to use them. As each question is answered, users progress through the virtual subway system, learning important copyright rules that apply to their specific situations. At the “final stop,” a list of guidelines for using the copyrighted media is provided.
John Dugan, legal counsel for Baruch College, said, “This guide is a valuable tool that enables faculty to obtain useful, practical advice on copyright issues they may face without confronting the daunting complexities of the copyright law itself.” Baruch’s assistant vice president for technology, Arthur Downing, who initiated the project, said, “We are responding to the needs of academic institutions for a tool that will help and encourage faculty to use media in their courses. This is especially crucial since higher education is increasingly utilizing technology and online delivery components to augment classroom interaction.”
Downing also noted that, while the new learning resource is based on Baruch College and CUNY copyright guidelines, these guidelines are common to many academic institutions and thus applicable for universities across the nation. He further emphasized the need to “continuously enhance this resource with the help of the educational community.”
Other Copyright Resources
Last summer, CAA launched Intellectual Property and the Arts, its own resource for copyright, digital, and intellectual-property issues related to the visual arts. In addition, Information and Library Services at the University of Maryland University College hosts a webpage with a broad range of information on legally using copyrighted materials in classes and on the internet; this information is especially useful for beginners. Reed College also maintains a simpler webpage on using copyrighted materials in academia, with helpful links to information gathered by other schools and organizations.
Getty Research Institute on the Future of the BHA
posted by Christopher Howard — June 16, 2009
The Getty Research Institute just published a statement on its website regarding the future of the Bibliography on the History of Art (BHA, also known as the International Bibliography of Art, or IBA). The statement appears in full below:
In response to current economic conditions, the J. Paul Getty Trust recently announced it will significantly reduce its 2010 fiscal year budget. This will have an impact on all of the Getty’s operations, including the Getty Research Institute (GRI). Since news of the Getty’s budget reduction became public, including information about the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), we have received some inquiries about the BHA’s future. We thought it would be helpful to review the history of the Getty’s involvement with the BHA, the current status of the database, and our expectations for its future.
From 1990, when the International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA) and the Répertoire d’Art et d’Archéologie (RAA) came together to form BHA, it was a joint project between the Getty and the major database producer, the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique-CNRS. At the end of 2007, this collaboration ceased and BHA formally came to an end. Since January 2008, the GRI has continued production of the database on its own, under the name of the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), and over the last sixteen months, the GRI has made an effort to forge collaborative partnerships on the IBA both nationally and internationally.
While there is interest in seeing the database continue, there have been no formal partnership commitments and no guarantees of outside funding for the project. Unfortunately, with the GRI facing severe budget challenges and without strong and committed partners to share the work, it has become impossible for the Getty to maintain the IBA on its own. Nevertheless, the GRI continues to be interested in seeing the IBA continue its service to the art historical field.
In the near term, the IBA will continue its work, and the first of three updates to the database will be on June 30, 2009. This update will include new data (IBA), and all of the past data of BHA and RILA. It will not contain RAA. This June 30 update will also include the updates from December 31, 2008 and March 31, 2009, which were delayed for technical reasons. All subscribers will also receive scheduled updates on September 30, and December 31, 2009.
Beginning January 1, 2010, the Getty will no longer support the ongoing IBA. We are hopeful that by this time the IBA will be transferred to an organization that can provide continuing support for this valuable resource. Our goal is to move the BHA/IBA to an organization that will provide a transfer in service smooth enough that subscribers may not even notice. We are hopeful that the same distributors will be used after January 1, 2010, and that updates will continue in a regular way.
We will keep the art historical community informed as this process develops. At this time, we would like to express our gratitude to the art reference librarians, art historians, and graduate students whose support has sustained RILA/BHA/IBA for over 29 years. We look forward to your continued support during this period of transition.
Last week CAA published a short statement addressing its concerns about this invaluable database for academic research in the visual arts.
CAA Statement on BHA and Getty Research Institute
posted by Michael Fahlund — June 12, 2009
Like many of our art colleagues and allied academic and cultural institutions in the field, the College Art Association is deeply concerned about the status of the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). CAA continues to communicate with the Getty Research Institute (copublisher of the BHA, along with the French Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) about the future of the BHA and how this vital bibliographic resource can be maintained. We will do what we can as necessary to secure its longevity once we have had our inquiries answered by the Getty.
MLA and HASTAC Developing Tenure Guidelines for Digital Scholarship
posted by Christopher Howard — May 27, 2009
“Even as the use of electronic media has become common across fields for research and teaching,” reports Scott Jaschik at Insider Higher Ed, “what is taken for granted among young scholars is still foreign to many of those who sit on tenure and promotion committees.”
While junior professors lament the exclusion or diminution from tenure reviews of their born-digital work, whether publication or project, the Modern Language Association (MLA) and a group called the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) are tackling the issue head on with new guides that offer tenure committees help in properly evaluating digital scholarship. MLA’s Information Technology Committee is developing these guides through a wiki, which publishes both finished and in-progress work.
In his article, “Tenure in a Digital Era,” Jaschik examines the many perceptions and problems at issue, including peer review; digital and print publications; and work that crosses traditional categories of research, teaching, and service.
Google Book Settlement Opt-Out Deadline Approaching
posted by Christopher Howard — April 07, 2009
The deadline for authors and publishers to opt out of a recent class-action settlement regarding the scanning and electronic distributing of in-copyright books by Google is May 5, 2009.
Last October, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced a settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the United States from the collections of a number of major US libraries participating in Google Book Search.
For full details on the settlement and to opt out, please visit www.googlebooksettlement.
Online Database Links Three Major Art Research Libraries
posted by Christopher Howard — March 19, 2009
Whether you’re researching ancient Egyptian art, provenance in Renaissance Italy, modern Latin American art, or contemporary artist’s books, three major New York–based institutions—the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Collection, and the Brooklyn Museum—have joined forces to help you. The libraries and archives of these three museums recently launched Arcade, an online database that allows researchers worldwide to search their combined resources through a single interface.
Searches may be limited not only by library location—the MoMA library, for example, has two research sites in the city—but also by format specifications, including auction catalogues, artist’s books, primary-source and archival materials, and digital resources. For older users of these collections, Arcade provides specific searching using Dadabase (MoMA’s catalogue), FRESCO (Frick Research Catalog Online), and Brookmuse (the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives catalogue).
Other features include relevancy ranking of results, a searchable table-of-contents in thousands of records, book-jacket images, icons that identify categories of results, and links to Google Books files. RSS feeds provide up-to-date headlines of news in the art world. Featured lists present the collections in new ways. Links to recent acquisitions, finding aids, bibliographies, new digital collections, and library blogs are also offered in Arcade.
CAA on Facebook
posted by Christopher Howard — February 09, 2009
CAA has created an official group page on Facebook, the popular social-networking website, to complement CAA’s growing digital initiatives. The Facebook group joins this frequently updated CAA News page and its RSS feed, Twitter accounts for both CAA and caa.reviews, and a conference blog for the upcoming Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
We look forward to using Facebook and these other online tools to promote CAA activities and programs not only to our members, but also to a larger audience. We also encourage your feedback. This month you can look forward to postings about special conference events, tips for the job search, information about our newly published directories of graduate schools, and much more.
Kress Foundation Survey for Current and Former Fellows
posted by Christopher Howard — February 04, 2009
The Samuel H. Kress Foundation is assembling a contact database for all current and former Kress fellows in art history, art conservation, historic preservation, and related fields. The main purpose of this database is purely administrative, and the foundation’s intention is to keep all supplied contact information confidential.
Having said that, the Kress also understands that it would be helpful to the community of its fellows to communicate with each other for a variety of professional purposes, ranging from developing mentoring relationships to identifying colleagues with similar professional interests to simply comparing notes on fellowship experiences.
The foundation is therefore considering reserving a section of its new website for a password-restricted directory of current and former Kress fellows, to which only those fellows would have access.
The Kress invites all former and current fellows to complete a brief survey registering their willingness to supply contact information for a confidential directory, their interest in extending access for such a directory to other Kress fellows, and the value they would derive from having access to such a directory. The survey should take no more than five minutes to complete.
Questions? Please send an email to fellows@kressfoundation.org.
Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Settlement
posted by Christopher Howard — October 29, 2008
The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the United States from the collections of a number of major US libraries participating in Google Book Search. The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of AAP’s membership. The class action is subject to approval by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form, by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the web. The agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online, and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.
To read more about this landmark settlement, visit the Authors Guild v. Google Settlement Resources Page and the Google Book Search Copyright Settlement. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, the New York Times, and Wired all report on the story.
Free Digital Images for Scholarly Publications
posted by Christopher Howard — October 16, 2008
CAA reminds you that three major museums—the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—have made digital images of works from their collections available for free for scholarly publications.
National Gallery
As part of its ongoing commitment to support scholarship and encourage research into England’s collection of old-master paintings, the National Gallery waives reproduction charges for digital images for use in academic books and journals that meet specific criteria and where orders are processed and delivered via its Picture Library website. Authors publishing academic work relating to the gallery’s collection are encouraged to use high-quality digital images available only from National Gallery Images, where charges will be waived for nonprofit, short-run publications. Discounts are also available for image use in student theses, academic presentations or lectures, and noncommercial private use.
Images are available at A4 and A5 at 300 dpi/ppi. The picture files themselves are derived from fully color-calibrated digital-image files created by the National Gallery. The color is therefore consistent across all images in the collection, meaning image users are able to make informed comparisons about color, tone, and brightness, and be assured of consistent color reproduction through to print.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Since early 2007, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has ended charging reproduction fees for its images used in scholarly publications. Publishers will be able to download images from the museum’s collection of more than 25,000 works directly from its website.
The museum keeps a broad definition of “scholarly.” The images will be available to students and teachers, as well as to publishers, for use in their research and coursework. The museum will continue to charge commercial publications, but their termination of fees for reproduction may encourage other institutions to follow suit.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 2007 the Metropolitan Museum of Art formed a partnership, called Images for Academic Publishing, with the nonprofit digital-image provider ARTstor to offer high-resolution digital images of artworks in its collection for scholarly publication—free of charge. This initiative is intended to make it easier and less expensive for authors and publishers license images for reproduction. Under a special agreement with ARTstor, this service will be available to users—both individual and institutional—who are not ARTstor subscribers.
With this important step in overcoming a longstanding obstacle to scholarly art publication, the museum aims to serve its scholarly mission by disentangling many of its most frequently requested works of art from the burden of permissions paperwork—and from the confusion that often accompanies image rental, artwork copyright, photographic copyright, and licensing. Included are many works whose copyrights have expired (generally, works created before 1923 or whose creators died more than seventy years ago) are in this cluster of images. In some instances, however, third-party copyright permissions may be needed (such as where the underlying work in an image is still under copyright). Other terms and conditions also apply.
More Information
For more information on CAA’s work on digital images, publishing, copyright, and more, please see the Intellectual Property and the Arts section of the website.