From: Nancy Boerner <nboerner_at_indiana.edu>
ACRL/Western European Specialists Section General Membership
Program
Monday, June 30, 1997, 9:30-11:00
Hotel Crowne Plaza Parc Fifty-Five -- Sienna I
"Intellectual Property in the Digital Library: from the Vatican
Library to the Future"
H.M. Gladney
IBM Almaden Research Center
San Jose, California 95120-6099
The 150,000 manuscripts in the Vatican collection are a critical
source for literary scholars, historians, and art historians,
because they contain not only seminal texts but also magnificent
illustrations. An IBM collaboration with the Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana is an early experiment to explore the
technical, financial, and practical intellectual property
management problems of making illustrated mediaeval manuscripts
accessible by the Internet. The special role of the Vatican
collection in Western civilization gives the work immense social
value.
Dr. Gladney will convey what has been learned from the project,
touching also on similar lessons gained from about 10 other IBM
joint studies, including ones with the Indies Archives (Spain),
Andrew Wyeth's personal collection, an Asian folk art collection,
a scientific periodicals publisher, and Yale's Beineke Library.
All show what is needed to maintain both the intellectual
integrity of the disseminated images and the reputations of the
institutions making their collections more accessible to scholars
and to the public at large.
First-rate management of source material and other intellectual
property is more difficult and more controversial than anybody
understood 5 years ago. Effective protection of critical values
requires carefully managed combinations of physical materials,
administrative measures, and technical means. Having developed
techniques for mitigating most risks that librarians have
identified, IBM intends to provide the technical components of a
complete protection system. Dr. Gladney will proceed from
specifics of the Vatican Library Project to a broad review of
these risks and technical mitigations, with a glimpse into the
status of technical components.
Dr. Gladney's Web page on the Vatican Project, including
citations from Vatican manuscript pages and from other
collections, will be available on the WWW after Thursday 19th
June at <http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/gladney/ala.html>.
He plans to include additional materials by June 30.
Please join WESS members at this timely and interesting
presentation and discussion.
Received on Thu Jun 19 1997 - 13:18:37 EDT