10.0481 NINCH announcements

WILLARD MCCARTY (willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Thu, 28 Nov 1996 18:00:04 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 10, No. 481.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: David Green <david@cni.org> (94)
Subject: CONFU MEETING

[2] From: David Green <david@cni.org> (56)
Subject: CNI Interim Exec. Director

--[1]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 13:51:33 -0500
From: David Green <david@cni.org>
Subject: CONFU MEETING

NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT

November 27, 1996

CONFERENCE ON FAIR USE MEETING - November 25, 1996

I am re-distributing Page Miller's account of the CONFU Meeting of November 25.

This was expected to be the final meeting of this group, which has been
meeting for two years, preparing guidelines for the fair use of digital
materials in educational settings. However, to give participants time to
distribute the proposed gudelines deeply into their constituencies, for
discussion and endorsement (or not), the period for consideration of the
guidelines was extended to May 19, 1997, when the final meeting of CONFU
will be held.

NINCH will be posting Peter Fowler's "Interim Report," the proposals and
other contextual material on its Web Site (www-ninch.cni.org). A further
announcement will be made when all materials are assembled.

David Green

===========

NCC Washington Update, vol. 2, #40, November 26, 1996
by Page Putnam Miller, Director of the National Coordinating
Committee for the Promotion of History <pagem@capaccess.org>

On November 25 the Conference on
Fair Use (CONFU), which has for the past two years been exploring issues
related to the application of fair use in the digital environment, met for
what many thought would be the final meeting. The purpose of the meeting
was to review the draft of a interim report on CONFU's work. Peter Fowler
of the Patent and Trademark Office had prepared the draft report which
summarizes the work of the last two years and which, when it is finalized,
will be forwarded to Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of
Patents and Trademarks Bruce A. Lehman. And it is envisioned that Lehman
will be transmitting the report to Congress to become a part of the
legislative record.

An important part of the interim report is the appendices which contain
not only background material, such as the participants in CONFU, but also
drafts of proposed guidelines for using copyrighted material for
educational and library purposes in the digital environment. The interim
report includes three proposed guidelines -- educational fair use for
digital images, educational fair use for distance learning, and fair use
for educational multimedia use.

Four issues surfaced for considerable debate at the November 25 meeting.
First, the consensus of the participants was that the period for review
and endorsement of the proposed fair use guidelines should be extended
from the draft's date of March 31, 1997 to May 19, 1997. This will allow
for more substantial consideration by interested parties. Related to this
was the decision that CONFU should have one more meeting to review the
endorsements and to determine if the individual proposed guidelines had
received strong and broad based enough support to merit their being called
a CONFU guideline.

Second, there was a lengthy debate on the degree to which the educational
multimedia fair use guidelines have been, under the leadership of the
Consortium of College and University Media Centers (CCUMC), moving on a
different track from the other CONFU guidelines. There was particular
concern that CCUMC had, prior to going through the CONFU endorsement
process, taken the multimedia guidelines to the House Subcommittee on
Courts and Intellectual Property of the Judiciary Committee and received
the subcommittee's endorsement. Since a number of organizations that
represent user interests have expressed problems with these guidelines,
there is a question as to whether they will in fact gain the broad based
support of CONFU. The determination of this will be left until May when
all the endorsements can be evaluated.

A third topic of extended discussion was on the interim draft report's
omission of the electronic reserve system guidelines, which deal with a
library's creation at the request of faculty members of electronic
reserves that provide supplemental material for specific courses in
nonprofit educational institutions. The draft report summarized the
working group's deliberations on these guidelines and stated that at the
September 6, 1996 meeting there was general consensus that the electronic
reserve system guidelines had not received widespread acceptance even
though some organizations had indicated that they would endorse them. At
a number of CONFU meetings various representatives of publishers and
authors had stated firmly that they did not believe that any electronic
reserve system should be permitted under fair use. Because of this
impasse, Fowler had decided to omit these proposed guidelines from the
appendix. Some people argued that they were part of CONFU's work and
should be in the appendix. Others felt that it would be confusing to
include proposed guidelines were clearly not going to achieve broad
support. Thus Peter Fowler decided to uphold the decision to leave them
out of the appendix. However, it should be noted that several library
and educational organizations as well as the Association of American
University Presses had indicated support for the electronic reserve
guidelines.

Finally, there was the decision to change the wording in the interim
report from guidelines to proposals. The final report will include the
word "guidelines" for those proposals that attain sufficient support.
What comprises "consensus" or "endorsement" was an issue that reemerged
throughout the day with some general agreement that it meant broad based
support from all of the groups -- publishers, authors, educators,
librarians, and scholars -- that have had a vested interest in CONFU. The
revised interim report will soon be available on the WEB page of the
Office of Patents and Trademarks with instructions for sending endorsement
letters. NCC Updates will provide the specific WED page address once the
report it posted.

***********************************************************
NCC invites you to redistribute the NCC Washington Updates.
A complete backfile of these reports is maintained by H-Net
See World Wide Web: http://h-net.msu.edu/~ncc/
***********************************************************

--[2]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 16:13:56 -0500
From: David Green <david@cni.org>
Subject: CNI Interim Exec. Director

NINCH ANNOUNCMENT

November 27, 1996

JOAN LIPPINCOTT APPOINTED INTERIM DIRECTOR OF CNI

>Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 15:23:26 -0500 (EST)
>Reply-To: cni-announce@cni.org
>>Precedence: bulk
>From: Joan K Lippincott <joan>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <cni-announce@cni.org>
>>
>The chief executives of the Association of Research
>Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom have selected Joan K.
>Lippincott as Interim Executive Director of the
>Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) after the
>untimely death of Paul Evan Peters. Lippincott has
>served as Assistant Executive Director of CNI since
>1990.
>
>In announcing the appointment, Duane Webster,
>Executive Director of the Association of Research
>Libraries, emphasized that the three sponsoring
>associations are committed to moving forward with the
>full array of CNI programs, projects, and meetings.
>The three associations expect to launch a national
>search for a permanent Executive Director in the
>coming months.
>
>Lippincott has played a central role in the
>development of CNI since its inception and has
>provided leadership for CNI's New Learning
>Communities program, the Working Together
>collaborative workshops, and other initiatives.
>Prior to 1990, she held positions at the American
>Council on Education, the National Center for
>Postsecondary Governance and Finance, Cornell
>University's Mann Library, George Washington
>University, Georgetown University, and the State
>University of New York at Brockport. She received an
>A.B. from Vassar College, an M.L.S. from SUNY
>Geneseo, and has completed graduate coursework at
>George Washington University and Cornell University.
>She is currently completing her doctoral studies in
>higher education at the University of Maryland at
>College Park. She has written on such topics as
>collaboration between librarians and information
>technologists, networked information, and end-user
>searching.
>
>Webster stated, "No one is better suited to provide
>CNI leadership during this turbulent period than
>Joan. She has served from the earliest days of the
>Coalition as a key player in creatively developing
>the programs and the staff. She has won the respect
>and confidence of all who have worked with her. We
>are pleased that she has agreed to lead our
>communities in shaping the future of the Coalition."
>
>--