>> 2000 Town Meetings >> Chicago THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Tuesday, January 11, 2000 Chicago Historical Society Chicago, Illinois Thomas W. Bower Thomas W. Bower is Deputy Registrar at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Among other duties, he has responsibility for oversight of the museum's copyright issues and has been Co-Chair of the SI Rights and Reproductions Committee since 1992. During that time he has overseen the creation of image use guidelines for the institution. He has been a member of CAA's Committee on Intellectual Property since 1995. Carol Ann Hughes Carol Ann Hughes has worked as an academic librarian in a variety of settings for over 25 years. She is currently employed by Questia Media, Inc., a commercial research service designed to support students in undergraduate core courses. She came to Questia Media from the University of Iowa where she served as Head of Information, Research, and Instructional Services. Other former positions include that of program officer for RLG's interlibrary loan program, SHARES and the University of Michigan where she was assistant to the Director. She received her MLS from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an MBA from UCLA, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan School of Information. Robert Panzer Robert Panzer is the Executive Director of VAGA, the Visual Artists and Galleries Association, Inc., an artists membership organization and copyright collective. Formed over twenty years ago, VAGA was the first copyright clearinghouse in the country to represent reproduction and related rights for fine artists. VAGA represents over 500 American artists and estates, and through agreements with sister organizations worldwide, approximately 2000 foreign creators. In addition to VAGA's role in administering licenses on behalf of its members, VAGA polices for infringements in areas of copyright, trademark and moral rights. Robert Panzer is a member of the CAA Committee on Intellectual Property. Jennifer Trant Jennifer Trant is a the Executive Director of the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) an innovative not-for-profit collaboration that shares, shapes and standardizes museum digital documentation and makes it available for educational use. Trant serves on the Board of the Media and Technology Committee of the American Association of Museums (AAM), is past chair of the Multimedia Working Group of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Committee on Documentation (CIDOC), is co-chair of the Museums and the Web Conference and the International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM), and was on the program committee of the ACM Digital Libraries conference in 1999 and 2000. She was the first Director of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL), an innovative project to explore the use of digital museum documentation on university campuses, participated in the Visual Images Working Group of Conference on Fair Use (CONFU). Trant was Editor-in-Chief of Archives and Museum Informatics: the cultural heritage informatics quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal from Kluwer Academic Publishers, from 1997-2000. Trained as an Historian (BA Hons, Trinity College, Toronto) and Art Historian (MA, Queen's University, Kingston) Trant's career has included work with the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Getty Art History Information Program, The Art Information Task Force (a joint project of the College Art Association and the Getty Project that produced the Categories for the Description of Works of Art), the Arts and Humanities Data Service, King's College, London, England and Archives & Museum Informatics, a cultural heritage informatics consulting firm. Hercurrent interests center around the use of technology to improve access to cultural heritage information, and to integrate the culture fully into digital libraries for research, learning and enjoyment. Renate Wiedenhoeft Renate Wiedenhoeft is President and co-founder of Saskia Ltd. Cultural Documentation. Saskia was established in 1966, amidst the dynamic forces of art history at Columbia University in the sixties, to provide high quality images for serious art history research and education. Quickly acquiring the support of the ten largest research institutions in the country, and with the partnership of Fulbright scholar Ron Wiedenhoeft, Renate grew the company into the important archive that it is today. She has been active in numerous organizations over the past 35 years -- such as CAA since 1966 and VRA since its inception. Other related organizations include ARLIS/NA, US/ICOMOS/ National Trust Organization. Renate has overseen many transitions in the materials Saskia provides for scholarly study -- not only in the kinds of materials offered but also in the difficulties of acquiring those materials. From having to help free her husband from nine months of imprisonment in East Berlin for photographing architecture, to negotiating rights with museums around the world, Renate's breadth of experience offers a broad perspective on the many issues involved in providing educational materials in an ever-changing environment.