Don't forget! The Intellectual Property SIG will meet during the MCN annual conference in Philadelphia next week. The meeting (the last one of the millenium!)is scheduled for Friday 29 October 1999, from 4-5:30.
Everyone is invited: SIG members, potential members, anyone interested in or totally confused by Intellectual Property in museums. On the agenda: MCN is solidifying it's infrastructure and one aspect of that is having the SIGs be one official arm of ongoing collaboration/liaison with outside organizations. What this means is that instead of the Board attempting to create and sustain every relationship with partner organizations to MCN on an ad-hoc individual basis, the SIGs can form lasting relationships with organizations relevent to each SIG topical area, and be the MCN liaison to that group. These need not be "tech" organizations. So for instance the Standards SIG might work with CIMI, California SIG with the Calif. Assoc. of Museums, Visual Information SIG with Visual Resources Association. This is a significant role for the SIGs. Forms of collaboration include: * bring in the fresh viewpoints and expertise of these other groups to develop sessions for the MCN conference * work with them to develop co-hosted workshops or sessions at their conference * work with them to develop a training course in your SIG topic that could become part of the larger, modular "MCN Curriculum" and offered as a workshop at conferences, and perhaps locally between conferences * work to develop shared documentation in the SIG area on best practices * membership sharing (share email list for SIG, trade discounts to conferences, etc) MCN's web hosters are just this week completing the new SIG web pages and forums. These new tools and dicsussion forums will include for each SIG: * a SIG home page * a SIG email list * a SIG web forum (basically an archive of the email list that anyone on the web can browse and read and subscribe themselves to). At the SIG meeting we will be: * collecting everyone's email and name so we can sign them onto the SIG list * discussing which organization(s) your SIG should liaison with. * discuss what might be the first form of collaboration with that group (in particular a co-hosted session at the 2000 MCN conference; the call for proposals will happen in the next couple of months). * each SIG webpage will start with just the SIG name, list forum, and Chair contact. But they should all have by MCN 2000 a SIG mission statement and list of links to professional resources in the SIG topic, list of upcoming co-hosted sessions, projects or workshops, and anything else we think of. * The SIG Chair should not do all the work by default! We will discuss how we are going to break out the various workflows, including - who will write the mission statement? who will find the professional links? who will moderate/stimulate the SIG email list? who will contact a partner organization to begin collaborations? who will be the SIG webmaster forwarding content to MCN for the SIG site? who will take notes of the meeting and then report to the SIG Committee list? Many thanks to Richard Rinehart, MCN Board SIG Liaison, for proposing this structured agenda and pushing forward the development of the SIG webpages. To quote him, "I think that the MCN SIGs are poised to become the most active and influental bodies in MCN and in the museum/information community...the SIGs are where we can go first to get each new year's Board members. What I'm trying to do is to give the SIGs some structure, direction, powers, and tools to enable real activity. Of course what each SIG does with them does is up to you!" I look forward to seeing everyone in Philadelphia. Bring your ideas, and be ready to participate! Thanks and see you soon. Amalyah Keshet Chair, the Intellectual Property SIG amalyah keshet head of visual resources (photo services / rights & reproductions) the israel museum, jerusalem [email protected] visit our museum: <www.imj.org.il>
