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Welcome to the NINCH web site. |
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The First Edition of The NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the
Digital Representation & Management of Cultural
Heritage Materials
was published online November 2002. Described as "a resource
that will become a touchstone for new practitioners for years to
come," the NINCH Guide is designed for those in all sectors
of the cultural community who are digitizing and
networking cultural
resources.
Comments and suggestions are strongly encouraged to assist us make
the Guide responsive to the community it serves. Go directly to
the NINCH Guide, make your
comments, or see background
on the Guide's production. A PDF
version of the Guide (242 pages in length) is now also available.
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Since 1997, NINCH has organized town meetings around the nation
that educate the field in the basics of copyright law and the new
issues arising from networking and using cultural materials online.
The Copyright Town Meetings enable the
community to explore new strategies for managing and using intellectual
property. Reports are available on some individual meetings and
on each annual series. Topics of the 2003 meetings have included
Rights
Issues for Digital Publishing (New York, February 26), Artists'
Rights Issues (Cleveland, April 12), and Creating
IP Policy in Museums (Portland, Oregon, May 22).
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In 2003, NINCH is collaborating with OCLC
and the Colorado Digitization Project in producing a series of day-long
practical workshops on copyright
issues for the cultural community in a digital age. The workshop
is funded by IMLS. A key feature of the workshops is a modular Resource
Set of materials that participants may use at work and to assist
in organizing their own workshops. Speakers for the series (Lolly
Gasaway, Georgia Harper, Maria Pallante-Hyun, Rachelle Browne, and
Linda Tadic) cover the following topics: Copyright Basics in a Digital
Age; Developing Institutional Policy; Intellectual Property Audits;
Risk Management and Rights and Permissions. For further information
see the OCLC
web site for this series.
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NINCH is a lead partner in a multi-year Computer Science and Humanities
initiative, designed to foster convergence and long term collaboration
between the two disciplines. An initiating Roundtable was convened
by the National Academies in March 1997, followed by a NINCH-organized
"Building Blocks" Workshop
for humanities professionals, focusing on changing disciplinary
needs. A January 2003 conference, "Transforming
Disciplines," opened the next stage of the initiative with demonstrations
of the potential and limits of current technology and speculation
about new tools, training, and shifts in disciplinary thinking that
might allow more fruitful relationships between the communities.
See
Jan 27 Press Release and Conference
Summary.
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NINCH's commitment to its membership and to the cultural community
is unwavering. As we look toward 2004, it is clear that NINCH must
redefine its role in the digital environment. While it is certain
that NINCH is entering a transitional period, the fundamental rationale
of NINCH's founding--to vigorously promote the importance of translating
the vision of a connected, distributed, and accessible collection
of cultural knowledge into a working reality--remains undiminished.
A Transition Committee is actively considering the shape of NINCH's
future and will keep the membership informed of its progress.
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