June 1, 2004, vol. 1, no. 3
Image Stuff Home

Co-editors: Corey Schultz (Stanford University) & Kristin Solias (University of Massachusetts, Boston)

Table of Contents
VRA Funnies
Daily Dilemmas- VRA Intellectual Property Rights Committee
Daily Descriptive Dilemmas - Coconut Cup Answers
VRA Bulletin Sneak Peak
Chapter News

VRA Funnies
Jonathan Cartledge, Massachusetts College of Art

Cartoon

Daily Dilemmas
VRA Intellectual Property Rights Committee - Publication Ethics Dilemma, submitted by Maryly Snow

Today a professor emeritus, not from my institution, contacted me inquiring whether I sold digital images to which I had rights, for inclusions in his book on architecture and interior design. Yes, I replied, I do. However, he inquired about four images to which I don't have the rights:

I can provide the professor with the digital images that he wants for his publication, and I can charge him money for providing him with images. But I don't have the authority to give him publication rights.

Here is what I told him. In the first two cases (the donor slide and the vendor slide) he was running a small risk that the donor or vendor might see the image published and want credit and/or payment. Alternately, they might never see the image, or they might be pleased to have the image used, especially if they were acknowledged.

I then told him that he should try to find out the owning institutions of the two public domain prints and to cite the location of the original in the credit or footnote. I tried to find out from the professor whether he knows who owns the originals and is trying to get around their licensing fee. If he is, I assume that I can choose to be an entrepreneur by providing goods at a more reasonable price. But maybe I have some ethical obligation to have the professor pay the higher fee of the owning institution. After all, that institution has to care for the original.

How would you handle the above situations? "Daily Dilemmas" wants to know! Email your responses to darcovic@uic.edu. A summary of responses received will appear in the next issue of Image Stuff. If you have a "Daily Dilemma" of your own for inclusion in a subsequent issue of Image Stuff, please submit it to darcovic@uic.edu

Responses from April's issue of Image Stuff: supplying digital images to your faculty when they're teaching at other institutions.

Andrew P. Gessner, Parsons School of Design: Once I had determined that the new institution would make the requested images, I would have informed the faculty member of this and indicated that my involvement was over. Period. Any further emails from this faculty member about this issue would be forwarded to the new institution's curator with the faculty member cc'd so she would be aware that I was no longer providing service since she no longer worked at my institution. Furthermore, putting my own professionalism on the line in the murky area of IP by providing digital images to another institution would be unacceptable, especially when it would have been completely unnecessary given the other curator's responsiveness and the fact that, regarding the faculty member, "we never could get her to do things the way we thought they ought to be done."

Janice Woo, California College of the Arts: My response doesn't address the intellectual property issue per se, but if it's okay to email copies to this instructor, why not to everyone else? Was the instructor granted special privileges upon leaving UC? For instance, can she still use the Interlibrary Borrowing Services that are for the UC community only? If not, then it's a slippery slope. Could I get some copies too -- that is, without obtaining permission from the copyright holders?

Daily Descriptive Dilemmas
Dilemma submitted by Jan Eklund, UC Berkeley

Responses from last issue's "coconut cup": the common consensus among all respondents was that it should be described as a "coconut cup" (a term which is in the AAT as a type of mounted cup) and should be classified with German metalwork along with other mounted cups made of ostrich eggs, nautilus shells, etc.

VRA Bulletin Sneak Peek
Volume 30, No. 2 (Fall 2003) - coming in June 2004

Head of Rampin Horseman, Greek, Archaic, c. 550 B.C., Louvre, Paris. Photo: J. Taormina.

Head of Rampin Horseman

Feature Articles:


Chapter News
The Greater Philadelphia Chapter spring meeting was held at Bryn Mawr College on Friday, April 2, 2004 with Carol Campbell, outgoing Chairperson, hosting and Heather Glaser presiding as incoming Chairperson. The guest speaker was Susan Shifrin. She presented an exhibit she organized entitled "Picturing Women." The exhibit was a collaborative endeavor among three venues including Bryn Mawr College, the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Rosenbach Museum and Library. Heather Glaser was the only member to attend the national conference in Portland. She reported on the three sessions she was able to attend. As a member of the ARTstor testing phase, Joan Beaudoin reported on Bryn Mawr's experience with the product. As a future partner in UCAI, Heather Glaser reported on Penn's future involvement in the project. Bryn Mawr will host a demonstration of ARTstor in June.

The New England Chapter held its spring meeting on May 21 at Connecticut College in New London, CT. The thirty attendees discussed their current projects and the move to digitization, with focused discussion on developing a strategic plan for digitization. After refreshments and a viewing of the Art Department's senior thesis exhibit, Mark Braunstein gave a workshop on using Photoshop to correct art and architectural images.

About thirty people attended a meeting of the Greater New York Chapter of the VRA at Hunter College on 21 May 2004. Our host was Steven Kowalik, the Art Librarian at Hunter. We gathered in the library where Steve lead us through a very interesting and informative demonstration of ARTsor, showing both the range of its content and some of the tools for viewing and displaying that content. During his demonstration, he answered a number of questions about Hunter's experience as an institution currently testing ARTstor. Barbara Rockenbach, from library relations at ARTstor, was also on hand to answer questions and assist with the demonstration. Following the demonstration, the meeting continued in Hunter's slide room for refreshments, conversation and a brief business meeting. After thanking Steve and Barbara and introducing the six people who had recently joined VRA, the chair, Dustin Wees, presented information provided by Barbara Treitel (who was unable to attend): a gift of $300 was made to the VRA to help support the Portland conference; the chapter's bank balance is $671.52; and there were, as of 20 May 2004, 21 current, paid-up members of the chapter. Dustin then made just a few announcements and suggested some possible topics for discussion on the chapter's listserv. Following the business meeting, many stayed on for some time to chat and continue sampling the wine and cheese.

The VRA Midwest Chapter held their Spring meeting at the VRA 2004 conference. The chapter is currently planning thier fall meeting in Minneapolis, and will include the Museum Computer Network and Minerva.

The VRA Northern California chapter held its spring Meeting May 14th at UC Santa Cruz. Trudy Levy (Image Integration) and Howard Brainen (Two Cat Digital) gave a condensed version of the "Managing a Digitization Project" workshop that they presented at the National VRA conference in Portland. The chapter held is business meeting during lunch on the library patio and discussed the Portland conference and circulated conference notes. In the afternoon, members toured UCSC's Special Collections (http://library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/) and were given the opportunity to examine the highlights of their collection. After, members visited the Visual Resources Collection and got the chance to inspect their fascinating DeCou lantern slide collection. (http://library.ucsc.edu/slides/decou/frameset2.html)

If you would like more information on any of the other regional chapters, please contact the appropriate chapter chairperson. A list of the chapters and contact information is posted on the VRA web site (www.vraweb.org/chapters.html).