About SIG-IFP

SIG/IFP helps ensure that ASIS&T members are aware of legislation and regulation affecting the information field and/or members of the information professions. It provides venues which encourage research on and discussion of current and emergent information policies as they affect society. It will promote awareness of state/provincial, national and international policies of public and private entities.

Message From the Chair

Greetings ASIS Information Policy SIG members!

First, let me take this opportunity to thank John Gathegi for both his leadership and inspiration as previous SIG president! Second, thanks also to those other SIG members who will serve as your officers this year. Jeffrey Forrest - Secretary; Shelly Warwick - Treasurer; Terry Maxwell - Listserv Moderator; and Janice Swiatek-Kelly - Newsletter Correspondent Full contact information for these individuals can be found on the officers page www4.uwm.edu/sois//asist-ifp/officers.html

Now to the fun stuff! We have revised the SIG web site, hopefully making it more useful to members and more attractive to browsers and the curious. (Again thanks to the team at FSU who got the web site off the ground in 2006). In the future we hope to make the web site a more active source/tool of communication for members in the area of information policy. If you have any thoughts for improvement please contact the new Information Policy SIG webmaster Rebecca Hall at UWM at rjhall@uwm.edu .

The first new feature of the website we're rolling out takes advantage of the many great lectures, presentations, etc. that are offered throughout the year, outside of the formal conference network but that may nonetheless be of great interest to SIG members in the area of information policy. Often these lectures are recorded for posterity but little use is made of them outside the sponsoring institution or organization. We would like to provide a point of access to this rich source of SIG member knowledge. For lack of a better word we call this part of the site "C-mini" for "conference in miniature" www4.uwm.edu/sois//asist-ifp/c_mini.html . C-mini offers links to lectures of interest related to information policy that have been recorded and are available on the Internet from SIG member institutions, organizations, etc.  If you follow the link you will see a cluster of initial submissions from a lecture series that our own CIPR (Center for Information Policy Research here at the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee) sponsored this past fall. The Colloquia consisted of talks from visiting/guest speakers/lecturers. These are people not regularly associated with our university so folks generally don't have the opportunity to hear them speak, likewise SIG members might not have that opportunity either. So we recorded their guest lecture/presentation.

Here's how you can contribute! If you're hosting a guest speaker at your institution, organization, etc. and will be recording his or her presentation/lecture/etc. and would like to make it more widely accessible, just email the URL of the lecture to Rebecca Hall, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee at rjhall@uwm.edu . Please include all details such as name and affiliation of the speaker, date and context of the presentation and title and short description. Don't include your own lectures and those of your co-workers but save this for talks of note from scholars, professionals, etc. who are not normally affiliated with you or your institution.

Second, we hope to have two editions of our planned "NEWSLETTER" out in 2007. This was an idea envisioned under John Gathegi's tenure as president but that never quite got off the ground. We'll begin small in both scope and detail, trying to develop a proto-type that can be expanded as time, resources and ideas permit. If at any time you have any thoughts about the scope or content of the NEWSLETTER please contact me. I am all ears at this point. Initially the NEWSLETTER will be produced in conjunction with the CIPR (Elizabeth Buchanan, Director) here at UWM. This gives us the staffing power needed to successfully undertake such a project and tap into the editorial expertise of Dr. Buchanan who is a frequent guest editor for The Journal of Information Ethics and Co-Editor of the INSEIT (International Society for Ethics and Information Technology) Newsletter. I will serve as general coordinator and editor of our newsletter. If anyone would like to work on developing a newsletter or prototype of a newsletter in 07, we would be happy to work with you. Just let me know!

Finally, I'd like to include a simple directory area on the website for those members that would like to participate. The directory would organize the diverse areas of information policy into various sub topics and then list those members whose research, teaching, or interests coincide with that area. Obviously creating a taxonomy that would satisfy everyone's array of expertise may provide some challenge, as one could envision one along topical lines (intellectual property, privacy, free speech, security, telecommunications, etc.) or along discipline/subject lines such as law, philosophy/ethics, economics, etc. or approach/methodological lines or some other factors. Another option would be to list participating individual members alphabetically (or by institution, organization, etc.) including several points of profile information (topic, discipline, approach/methodology?) that would allow others to understand the work that he or she performs. Stay tuned for developments on this area. If anyone would like to oversee or undertake this project just let me know.

All the best for 07!

tomas

News & Announcements

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SIG-IFP E-mail Discussion List

Instructions for joining the discussion list can be found on the ASIS&T website: mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigifp-l

To post a message to all the members, send email to: sigifp-l@asis.org

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New SIG-IFP website!

The ASIS&T Information Policy SIG website has a new look. It is our hope that this website will provide valuable information and links to resources and issues of interest in the area of Information Policy. If you have suggestions for ways we can make this site a more useful resource for you or how we can help facilitate communication among SIG-IFP members, please feel free to contact us.

Section 108 Study Group

Your IFP SIG president joined leading copyright experts including Mary Minow (librarylaw.com), Kenny Crews (Samuel R. Rosen II Professor in the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis) and Miriam M. Nisbet (Legislative Counsel, American Library Association), other  representatives of the library and archive community and numerous publisher/content providers in order to participate in the U.S. Copyright Office Section 108 Study Group’s Roundtable discussion on revision of Section 108 held in Chicago on January 31st. What is Section 108? Section 108 is the provision of the copyright law designed specifically for libraries and archives. For more see www.loc.gov/section108/ This study group (and report/recommendation) process is possibly the most significant development in copyright law affecting libraries and archives since the Copyright Act of 1976. The Study Group recommendation may include enlarging the range of entities that could benefit from reproduction and distribution rights of section 108 to include museums and campus media centers, increasing the privileges or use rights regarding archiving and digitalization of materials and accessibility of that content by remote users but may also include additional obligations or conditions of use upon the institution. Stay tuned for more on this development.

ASIS&T Annual Meeting

The 2007 ASIS&T Annual Meeting will be held October 18-25, 2007 in Milwaukee, WI. Call for Papers Deadlines and Submission Guidelines can be found on-line at: www.asis.org/Conferences/AM07/am07cfp.html

New C-Mini

The first new feature of the website we’re rolling out takes advantage of the many great lectures, presentations, etc. that are offered throughout the year, outside of the formal conference network but that may nonetheless be of great interest to SIG members in the area of information policy. "C-mini" (conference in miniature) offers links to lectures of interest related to information policy that have been recorded and are available on the Internet from SIG member institutions, organizations, etc. Take a look at the current cluster of initial submissions from the International Information Policy Colloquia from the Center of Information Policy Research at UW-Milwaukee. Visit the C-Mini page >>