How to Secure Copyright: The Law of Literary Property
Copyright
The author of this book goes over some of the history of copyright and some of the current existing laws. He explains that under the current laws of the U.S., securing a copyright doesn't require publication, registration, or any other action in the U.S. Copyright Office. Instead, copyright protection is secured automatically upon the creation of a work. Copyright protection is available to original works of authorship, such as musical works, sound recordings, photographs, literary works, movies, television, and software. The owner of a copyright has certain exclusive rights, such as selling the work, performing the work publicly, reproducing the work, and creating derivative works. The copyright owner can also transfer ownership of the work, whether by complete transfer or by granting a license. He explains information about how to secure a copyright and the advantages of registration with the Copyright Office. He also gives advice on the legal aspect of how to do this properly and offers where to get help in doing this.
Richard Wincor
Oceana Publications
January 1957
Book
ASIN: B007T3N06C
Media Art and the Digital Archive
Archives
For many, the idea of digital archives can often appear to be fundamentally opposed to media and art and can appear to be impossible to accomplish. This article examines some of the problems that digital archivists face when attempting to incorporate art pieces into their projects. According to Saba, even though a piece of art may have an audio or visual component, that does not make it the most important part of the piece. Archivists must determine which parts of the media are essential for its preservation and place a priority on these components, even if it may reduce the complexity of the piece. In addition to the physical components of the art piece, it is crucial to present its context in greater society, allowing the archive to become a place of cultural conservation. This can often include connecting the media to other pieces that are present in the collection. The documentation of these aspects of an art piece can be challenging when considering works that are performance or time based. Saba also questions how archives can effectively incorporate all of these components into an archive, with proper use of metadata, while also preserving the complexities that are present in the art piece.
Saba, Cosetta G.
2013
Rahman, Sabiha
Book chapter
ISBN: 9789048513833
Analog the Sequel: An Analysis of Current Film Archiving Practice And Hesitance to Embrace Digital Preservation
Archives
This article explores the reasons that many archivists overlook digital preservation when archiving films, particularly focusing on the risks of digital preservation compared to its physical counterpart. Current methods of film preservation are highly comprehensive. The industry uses strict guidelines on the selection, funding, maintenance and accessibility of archived films. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a leading non-profit organization in film preservation, sets many of these standards and explains that there are too many disadvantages in digitally preserving films to make any investments into it. One of the biggest problems that is present is the rapid obsolescence of digital files. Using 35mm cold film stocks, preservationists and archivists are able to safely keep films for over one hundred years, which is a lifespan that most digitally preserved films cannot match. In addition to this, many archives struggle with the storage of digital files. Films, especially ones with high quality, can take an immense amount of storage, and this can be exacerbated when keeping multiple copies of one film. Archivists also struggle with the cost of digitally preserving films. The standards for this practice are in their infancy, and many are hesitant to provide any investments to it, especially since the current methods work so well. However, Conrad warns that this refusal to address these problems will only delay the realities of the industry, as more and more films are not able to be properly preserved with physical methods.
Conrad, Suzanna
2012
Rahman, Sabiha
Journal Article
Ensuring the Legacy of Self-Taught and Local Artists: A Collaborative Framework for Preserving Artists’ Archives
Personal Archives
Colin Post’s article focuses on the importance of institutions establishing a collaborative relationship with local artist. The collaboration comes from the personal archives of artists sharing their content to institutions. To ensure the long-term preservation of artists’ personal archives, institutions need to work collaboratively with artists in their local communities, offering artists the skills, resources, and support necessary to create and sustain personal archives. For this kind of collaborative relationship to succeed, institutions will need to develop new models for working with potential donors, emphasizing skill-building and support for the artist to manage his or her personal archives as critical goals, in addition to the acquisition of the material itself into institutional holdings. These institutions will provide workshops and information on how local artist can manage their personal archives. As artist manage their own archives in the best way, the institutions can be a repository for long-term community access to those artist materials should they choose to donate their work. Post uses a real-life example of an artist named Cornelio Campos who worked together with the Durham County Library.
This example further re-enforces Post’s stance in the importance of a collaborative relationship with local artist and institutions to preserve works of art in any form. Post’s explanations make it clear that the benefits of this outweighs any reservations.
Colin Post
Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America
2017 Spring
Abbygail Dees
Understanding Copyfraud: Public Domain Images and False Claims of Copyright
Copyright
Chris Needham opens the door on the common copyfraud that occurs when museums misrepresent or restrict rights in a way that go against public domain copyright law. Needham first explains relevant copyright issues such as the copyright of certain artworks and books. Copyright lasts for about seventy years, but certain copyright laws can be a gray area when it comes to preservation of artifacts. How these artifacts become part of the public domain is a photograph is taken of the artifact and posted online for anyone to see much like a virtual museum. The author then dives into how the copyfraud of archives affect universities, publishing houses, and museums. In a more positive light, Needham shows how librarians and visual resource managers are supporting museums change their approach to copyright and copyfraud. Needham focuses on how this change is transforming scholarship and allowing scholars and librarians to better serve the public.
Chris Needham’s article is a well-written piece that dives into the issues that archives face with copyright laws. While copyright laws have been around for a long time, it can be difficult to interpret those laws for very specific situations, and it can be easy to commit copyfraud without realizing. This article is eye-opening and an important read for anyone within the scholarship field.
Chris Needham
Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America
2017 Fall
Abbygail Dees
Journal Article
Copyright Protection and Cumulative Creation: Evidence from Early Twentieth-Century Music
Copyright
This article uses information from an online database of music sampling to estimate the effect of copyright protection on the cumulative use of music. Using unique panel data that link upstream and downstream music, the author uses regression analysis to examine the rates at which early 20th-century musical works were used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The results suggest that copyright protection causes an upstream work to be used less than half as often as it would be if it were in the public domain after conditioning on upstream-song and downstream-year fixed effects. Placebo regressions in which the copyright expiration date is artificially shifted forward and backward in time by 2, 5, and 10 years suggest an immediate effect of copyright expiration on downstream use.
Stephanie Holmes Didwania
The University of Chicago Press Journals
June 2018
Antonella Federici
Journal
The Curator's Handbook: Museums, Commercial Galleries, Independent Spaces
Curation
This is the essential handbook for curators and students interested in curation. This book covers all areas of curation from mapping out all the stages of the exhibition-making process to the installation. The history of curation is discussed as well, dating back to the 17th century. The roles of a curator are discussed in the subjects of custodian, interpreter, educator, facilitator and organizer. Other points of interest focus on loan requests, budgets, schedules, exhibition catalogs and interpretation materials. If the advice and instruction from one decorated curator is not enough, there are numerous tips and words of advice from multiple international known museum curators. Adrian George provides us with some of the best insight from around the globe on the study and work of curators. George being the director and senior curator at the UK Government Art Collection in London gives him the standpoint of an experienced curator ready to provide his knowledge to others seeking it. Through the twelve chapters in this book, all forms of curation and its processes are covered in great detail. There are no other books on this subject that reach for such a detailed description of the position.
George, Adrian
Thames & Hudson
2015
Burton, Tyler
Book, E-Book
ISBN: 0500239282, 9780500239285
Kindle ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Curators-Handbook-Commercial-Galleries-Independent-ebook/dp/B00QVGUIJ0
All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist
Archive
Explores how art archiving is changing in theory, how our understanding of archiving is influenced and changed, and how archives can be made accessible. The topic of what archiving is, what it means to society, and the value it holds is addressed in terms of archiving art in regards to representing our culture.
A factor into preservation that is overlooked and should be addressed is considered as how the future will perceive our current archival databases and items we have preserved. Historically, the future will use our current archives as an aspect of study, therefore it is discussed how we are currently unable to determine how our archiving now will be seen at a future time.
Archiving is explored based on theory and how that theory is changing in practice.
Vaknin, Judy, Karyn Stuckey, & Victoria Lane
Libri Publishing
2013 May 1
Waddington, Calyn
Book
ISBN-13: 978-1907471766
Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow: A Guide to Staying Ahead of the Workflow Curve
Digital humanities
Russotti and Anderson give a good basic outline of Digital Asset Management. In contrast, or perhaps complimentary to Peter Krogh's The DAM Book, the authors bridge the gap between novice digital photographers and more advanced practitioners. Most of the book is rooted in practical knowledge in regard to the field of digital photography and its preservation. The book urges a reorientation of visual literacy based on the relationship between digital and photography. Digital influence upon photography is evident in the way it has evolved and changed visual culture. The authors maintain that this evolution is not new and is due to technological advances that replace or modify older, existing ones.
Russotti, Patricia and Richard Anderson
Focal Press
2009
Robert Clarke
Book
ISBN-13: 978-0240810959
Online Art Ephemera: Web Archiving at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Web archiving
Abstract Artist and art subject file collections contain important primary source ephemera for art historical research—but what happens when the ephemera are online? The National Museum of Women in the Arts has been web archiving art-related online ephemera using the Internet Archive's Archive-It since November 2011. This case study presents the considerations and challenges of archiving such types of material and provides a foundation for arts institutions to begin more collaborative web archiving.
Slania, Heather
Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries of North America
1 March 2013
Mulligan, Paige
Copyright 2013 The University of Chicago Press
Journal Article