Art Libraries Society
of
Roosevelt Hotel
Public Policy Committee
Meeting
Committee Members for
2004:
D. Vanessa Kam, Cara List, James Mitchell, Barbara Rockenbach,
Tim Shipe, Rina Vecchiola, Tony White, Cynthia Wolff.
Co-chairs: D. Vanessa Kam and Cara List
Executive Board Liaison:
Laura Schwartz
Attending Meeting:
D. Vanessa Kam, Roger Lawson (Outgoing member), Cara List, James
Mitchell, Tim Shipe, Rina Vecchiola, Tony White, and Cynthia Wolff (recorder).
Introduction
of members, co-chairs, and Board liaison; recognition of outgoing members Roger
Lawson (present) and Roberta Geier (not present).
Review of 2003 (facilitated
by D. Vanessa Kam)
See the committee’s annual
report, submitted to the Executive Board on
http://www.arlisna.org/arlismembers/2003pubpol.htm
The
Database
and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (DCIM). The Committee
will follow up on the development of the DCIM Act. Cindy Wolff will follow up
on news regarding this legislation and monitor the progress of a competing
bill, the Consumer Access to Information Act of 2004. The Committee will make
suggestions for action to the Board based on these pieces of legislation as
they develop. The American Library Association lists points of criticism about
the DCIM Act and finds that database proprietors are already covered adequately
under existing legislation without it.
UCITA. The Committee
will continue to monitor UCITA, although it does not appear that new
developments will appear on the horizon.
Several issues that were
also discussed briefly at the meeting included:
NINCH and
the Digital Future Coalition (DFC). Outgoing Public Policy Committee member and
former NINCH liaison Roger Lawson will investigate whom the Committee can
contact regarding the status of NINCH. NINCH appears to be defunct, as its
members are no longer asking for new members and no one is updating their
website. Roger will investigate these NINCH issues as a favor to the Committee
since he is an out-going member.
The DFC
until recently had been inactive, but has recently revived. It seems not to currently require formal membership
or paid dues, but public policy committee members will continue to monitor it.
We really appreciated how
Roger kept us abreast of what was going on in
The Public Policy Committee
also reviewed the various organizations it monitors and discussed which ones we
should continue to monitor.
Vanessa Kam,
the organizer of PrALiNe (Progressive Art Librarians'
Network), announced that PrALiNe is going on hiatus
and may resume at a yet-to-be-determined date. She will continue to monitor
activities of the Progressive Librarians’ Guild as they pertain to activities
of the Public Policy Committee.
Laura Schwartz, our liaison
to the Board, suggested we look into the National Coalition Against
Censorship since other organizations such as the College Art Association and
the American Library Association are members. Cara
List will investigate.
The Public Policy Committee
members also monitor a number of listservs for
discussion of relevant topics. We monitor the following listservs:
SOAF (SPARC Open Access
Forum)
FOS (Free Online
Scholarship)
LIB-LICENSE
LEH (Lesley Ellen Harris
Newsletter)
DIGITAL COPYRIGHT DIGEST-
this was monitored by Roger Lawson; James Mitchell has volunteered to monitor
it.
Progressive Librarians’
Guild
ARLIS/NA 2002-2005
Strategic Plan Action Items:
1. Establish guidelines for
kind and quantity of involvement in political action and lobbying allowable
under IRS 501 tax status.
Vanessa asked Laura to
clarify ARLIS/NA’s tax status as this will determine
the kind and quantity of involvement that the committee may choose to be
involved in.
2. Identify other agencies
and associations with shared interests in legislative/policy matters; link with
groups, as appropriate, to co-author and/or co-sign position statements;
provide descriptive annotations on other groups’ committees, working groups,
etc.
Ongoing.
3. Create, disseminate, and update regularly a
list of legislative topics and issues of a particular concern to arts and image
professionals; draft position statements consistent with ARLIS/NA interests;
publicize endorsed statements or other documents describing the Society’s
position on legal issues and legislation via the ARLIS/NA Web Site and Society
publications.
We discussed the
methods by which the Committee communicates with the Society's members. We feel
that the time-sensitive nature of much of our information generally makes the
ARLIS-L listserv a better forum than the ARLIS
Update newsletter. We hope to still occasionally use Update and Art Documentation
for articles that provide an outline of various issues that the Public Policy
Committee covers and for reporting on any workshops and seminars attended by
Committee members.
4. Assign individual committee members to
monitor specific web sites and listservs and report
activities to membership via the ARLIS/NA Web Site and ARLIS-L; refer items
requiring action/responses to Executive Board.
Ongoing.
5. Create a “recommended
reading” list on topics such as intellectual property, telecommunications, censorship and make available via the ARLIS/NA Web Site.
In
progress on the web site.
6. Create communication links and define
responsibilities shared among Public Policy Committee and ARLIS/NA Chapters to
identify issues and topics with legislative agendas.
We are in regular contact
with other committees, liaisons, and chapters, as needed.
Conference Session
Proposals
Laura Schwartz suggested we
start thinking about a session topic for next year’s conference. After some
brainstorming the following items came up:
Censorship. We discussed censorship as an appropriate area for the
Committee's work. Though not strictly a "public policy" issue, we
identified various areas that could be explored in future publications and
conference session proposals, including:
Point/counterpoint format?
(Last year’s session monitored by Barbara Rockenbach
had this format and it was very successful)
A panel
discussion?
The TEACH Act – does it protect
fair use of material in order to promote creativity?
The
stifling of expression and criticism?
Stifling creativity by
denying financial support?
Librarians
and collections being challenged?
Self-censoring on the part
of Collection Development librarians for fear of being publicly challenged or
fired for their choices?
Who can we invite to
speak? The NEA 4? Siva Vaidhyanathan? Laura Bush for cancelling
her poetry reading after hearing one of the poets criticize
the war in
James Mitchell and Cara List
offered to write a proposal for next year’s session.