Robert-Goldwater-Library

The road to Infotopia? On digitizing the world's books

Anthony Grafton in this week's New Yorker provides a lucid and level-headed analysis of the many fervid efforts to digitize the universe of the printed word, such as the Google Library Project and Microsoft's Live Search Books Publishers Program, as well as more focused (and frequently non-profit) ventures such as the Open Content Alliance and more subject-focused efforts such as Aluka (about which you've previously read in this space).

In fact, writes Grafton, the Internet will not bring us a universal library, much less an encyclopedic record of human experience. None of the firms now engaged in digitization projects claim that it will create anything of the kind. The hype and rhetoric make it hard to grasp what Google and Microsoft and their partner libraries are actually doing ...

Google and Microsoft pursue their own interests, in ways that they think will generate income, and this has prompted a number of major libraries to work with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit book-digitizing venture. Many important books will remain untouched: Google, for example, has no immediate plans to scan books from the first couple of centuries of printing ... Other sectors of the world’s book production are not even catalogued and accessible on site, much less available for digitization. The materials from the poorest societies may not attract companies that rely on subscriptions or on advertising for cash flow.

Closer to home Grafton also provides a concise and complimentary history of libraries from third millennium B.C. Mesopotamia to the present. The conclusion includes an encomium to libraries that might remind readers of the retardaire Nicholson Baker. But unlike Baker Grafton makes a case for libraries being an enduring participant in the research process, not the sole player:

For now and for the foreseeable future, any serious reader will have to know how to travel down two very different roads simultaneously. No one should avoid the broad, smooth, and open road that leads through the screen. But if you want to know what one of Coleridge’s annotated books or an early “Spider-Man” comic really looks and feels like, or if you just want to read one of those millions of books which are being digitized, you still have to do it the old way, and you will have to for decades to come.

Apart from the article, "Future reading: digitization and its discontents," there is a complementary online-only article with links to many of the web resources cited in the article.

ILLUSTRATION: TOM GAULD

South African Music Digital Archive

via Bring 'n Braai:

African music samples latest donation to the commons
Posted by Daniela on April 11th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour, Music

Another donation to the South African digital archive, being collected through Bring 'n Braai and the Free Music Project, is one which will be an incredible resource for children who will be using the One Laptop per Child computer. This donation is from ccMixter South Africa, and consists of the samples that were used for the SAfro-Brazil Remix competition.

Rebecca Kahn, ccMixter SA's resident blogger, explained more about the samples:

"The International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University and Anthony Caplan both created samples using traditional instruments such as the mutumba drums and the umrhube mouth bow. The mutumba drums are originallly from Zimbabwe and are used to accompany spiritual ceremonies that include dancing, singing, clapping and playing the mbira thumb piano. The ILAM have used these drums in a sample which you can hear here.

The umrhube mouth bow is a Xhosa mouth-resonated friction bow, and has been used by Anthony Caplan by using whistling techniques of Xhosa origin, as well as tapping the string in the style of similar instruments found around southern Africa, rather than 'bowing' the string as the Xhosa people do. Check out Anthony’s sample, Umrhube Gees here.

The Kundi harp, which has been used in an ILAM sample that you can hear here, is a five-string harp from Central Africa. It is an instrument traditionally played by young men and boys."

As Rebecca said in her blog entry, it is often difficult to find information or audio clips of these instruments on the internet. And if one does find this type of material, it's usually marked with a big 'all rights reserved' sign. So to have these samples made available on the web, as well as under a CC licence, is truly an invaluable resource. Even more so, these samples will now not only be used to stimulate the talent of our South African remixers, but will also be made available to open the minds of children around the world to the sounds of Africa. And who knows when the next Miriam Makeba or Hugh Masekela will be inspired to start making beautiful music?

iMoMA: Virtually Phlogging the Museum

via Artnet News, Feb 8, 2007:

DIGITAL CAMERA WOES AT MUSEUMS
Digital cameras and cell phones are playing havoc with the "Photos Not Allowed" policy at museums, according to a recent article by Ruth Graham in the New York Sun. Museums typically fret that if their visitors take snapshots of artworks on the walls, important "intellectual property rights" are being violated -- though cynics have long suspected that the museums just want to protect their monopoly on postcards and reproductions. These days, images of any popular art project can usually be found on photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

Now, pushing things one step further, comes the iMoMA Project by Travis and Brady Hammond, which aggregates all the Flickr images taken at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The project has special pages for celebrated MoMA works like Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk and Andy Warhol's Soup Cans, as well as the Yoshio Taniguchi-designed stairwell. Featuring snaps from all angles and under a variety lighting conditions, the project is a veritable phenomenology of the works. Hammond told the Sun that he hopes MoMA will embrace the idea, and feature their project in the museum itself, perhaps as "a little kiosk." How about putting it on www.moma.org? The project would provide a head-spinning mise en abyme on the web!

On the left coast, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been aggressively enforcing its "No Photos" policy in its current "René Magritte and Contemporary Art" blockbuster. According to BoingBoing, a tech blog, LACMA guards are being forced to leap into action whenever a museum visitor takes a cell phone from his or her pocket. (The guards are also required to wear Magrittean bowler hats!) BoingBoing particularly savored the irony of a show that blocks ordinary people from participating in the very proliferation of Magrittean imagery that the show itself celebrates.

As with other attempts to stop the sharing of digital content, any attempt to curtail the circulation of digital images is a fool's errand. As of this posting, dozens of photos of the "Magritte and Contemporary Art" have been posted on Flickr, including numerous snaps of artworks.

Links:

iMoMA home

About iMoMA

How to contribute

iMoMA's flickr group: theMoMAproject(NYC)

Reexamining Appropriation @ CAA

I attended a fascinating discussion last week about appropriation and visual art in the context of historical precedent and recent developments in copyright law. This panel was part of the annual College Art Association conference, but because of the interest in the topic, it was open to the public and held at the New York City Bar Association, at 42 W. 44th Street. The panelists included the Hon. Pierre Leval, who first articulated the "transformative" test critical to all artists confronted with copyright infringement claims.

Here is my re-cap of the session via NEWSgrist, 2/17/07:

Reexamining Appropriation: CAA Takes Over NYC Bar

Reexamining Appropriation:
The Copy, the Law, and Beyond

held Friday, February 16, 10:00 am - 12:30 pm: New York City Bar Association

PROGRAM:

Inappropriate? Copying in the Renaissance
Lisa Pon, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University held

The Reign of the Quotation–Appropriation and Its Audience
Johanna Burton, Princeton University

From Appropriation to Postproduction
Jaimey Hamilton, University of Hawai'i, Manoa

Appropriation v. Piracy, Round Two?
The Hon. Pierre N. Leval, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google

Chairs:
Martha Buskirk, Montserrat College of Art;
Virginia Rutledge, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Papua New Guinea vs. de Young Museum

The Jolika Collection of New Guinea, Marcia and John Friede Gallery, de Young Museum

via ArtInfo:
Experts Say Artifacts at De Young Museum Looted

SAN FRANCISCO, April 24, 2006—San Francisco's de Young Museum has come under fire since revealing a newly donated collection of Papua New Guinea tribal artifacts. Experts in the field have closely examined the 400 works and concluded that at least 9 were likely looted from the impoverished island nation, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The $100 million collection, being donated to the museum by Annenberg family heir John Friede, was cross examined in the latest edition of Nature magazine. Experts identified nine items, including a wooden gong and a carving of a copulating woman, that could "allegedly be traced back to worldwide trade networks, in which misappropriated specimens are sold to antiquities dealers," West Coast correspondent Rex Dalton wrote in Nature.

Anthropologists had already sounded the alarm even before Nature published the article. One anthropologist, who had once worked at New Guinea's national museum in Port Moresby, questioned whether a mask in the collection had been judged a cultural treasure by the New Guinea government, and therefore should never have left the island, immediately after the exhibition opened. In February, a second anthropologist from the Bay Area identified two other pieces from the collection that raised concern.

Christina Hellmich, recently hired as the curator of the de Young's New Guinea collection, said there was "absolutely no question" that Friede bought the artifacts on good faith from international dealers and hadn't engaged in illegal exports from Papua New Guinea. Friede plans to donate about 3,000 relics to the de Young.

The San Francisco Chronicle: War Drums Pound over de Young Display

Images © 2006 Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums, photographer: Jorge Bachman.

more info:
San Francisco magazine (May Issue)
Whose Art Is It Anyway? by Michael Stoll. 

LATimes,  June 3, 2006
The Papua New Guinea De Young dilemma
By Lee Romney
Papua New Guinea claims the San Francisco museum doesn't have a right to items in an exquisite collection. It adds a twist in the debate over cultural treasures.

Pissed-off Maori: Imitation, inspiration or appropriation?

via NZEdge:

Imitation, inspiration or appropriation?
2006 has seen a rash of advertising and design taking inspiration - with varying degrees of offensiveness - from Maori art and culture. An Italian ad for the Fiat Idea showing a group of black garbed women performing a mock haka has gone to air despite warnings of cultural insensitivity from NZ diplomats. According to Brad Tattersfield of NZ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, "we advised the advertising company that the use of Ka Mate in this way was culturally insensitive and inappropriate. MFAT advised the advertisers to either use a Maori group or a haka composed for women. However, the advertising company indicated they were proceeding despite this advice." In the US, an American developer's proposal to build a Maori-themed apartment complex in Texas has divided Maori opinion. While activist Ken Mair calls the plan "cultural theft and possibly theft of intellectual property" author Alan Duff thinks Maori have bigger problems to worry about: "Greece is not up in arms because Las Vegas did Ancient Greece themes in their casinos. Why are we so precious about things that don't count?" Finally, cult US fashion brand Paul Frank has released a T-shirt print titled 'Warrior Julius,' depicting its distinctive monkey mascot with a full facial moko.
(4 July 2006)

via The Art Newspaper:

New Zealand Maoris furious over plans for a themed apartment complex in Texas
By Jason Edward Kaufman | Posted 19 October 2006

NEW YORK. A proposed Maori-themed apartment complex outside Dallas recently served as a platform for the New Zealand natives to proclaim their pride. In June, after California-based Legacy Partners announced plans to build a residential complex featuring Maori themes and folk art in suburban Plano, the company received dozens of emails charging the company with "cultural theft." Complaints centered on the name of the complex, "Kiora Park," taken from the Maori expression of welcome. The problem was that the phrase is properly transliterated as "Kia Ora." "How many more mistakes will there be?" Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia asked. "We're all very proud of the culture and more than willing to share it with people who come here, but to have it transplanted into Dallas, that sounds a bit incredible," she said.

No harm was meant, explains Richard Brownjohn, a vice president in Legacy's Dallas office. "Our marketing people thought it had an unusual ring but was something people would easily pronounce. It was spelled as one word at first because Americans might butcher the spelling and we wanted it pronounced right. We didn’t think it would get Maoris upset," he says. The name was quickly changed to "Kia Ora Park".

Australian petroglyphs threatened by new gas project

From Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Arts Online
Sept. 18, 2006

The National Trust of Australia is calling for urgent measures to protect the largest collection of ancient rock art in the world, located in the rugged Dampier Archipelago in northwest Australia.

The calls took on new urgency Monday, after the state government of Western Australia approved plans to build a gas-processing facility on the Burrup Peninsula.

The National Trust, an independent agency charged with protecting heritage sites, wants a heritage listing for the region and a moratorium on industrial development.

In a report released last week, the National Trust said there are about one million rock carvings on the Dampier Archipelago, a chain of islands off a remote part of Australia.

The carvings are 6,000 to 30,000 years old and chronicle the cultural heritage of ancient Aboriginal societies.

The perils of permissions

Following up on the recent post regarding the crisis in art book publishing, this 'just in':

Jennifer Howard writes an article in the August 4, 2006, issue of Chronicle of Higher Education profiling Susan M. Bielstein and her recently published book, Permissions, A Survival Guide.

Props to Joy of NEWSgrist, who blogged Bielstein and her book last June as part of the NYU Comedies of Fair U$e conference; read an excerpt of the book here.

Access to the online version of the Chronicle is by login and password. Museum staff can read it with the intercession of a reference librarian. Everyone else is up to their own devices.

Here's a teaser of the article:

If scholarly publishing had an endangered-species list, the art monograph would be at the top. At least that's the perception of many art historians as they struggle to publish their work.

"Between dwindling sales and the soaring costs of acquiring illustrations and the permission to publish them, this segment of the publishing industry has become so severely compromised that the art monograph is now seriously endangered and could very well outpace the silvery minnow in its rush to extinction," writes Susan M. Bielstein in a recent call to arms, Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk About Art as Intellectual Property, published this spring by the University of Chicago Press.

This was no doubt the impetus for Christopher Lyon's musings in Art in America.

Google Book Search and A View From Europe

via The University of Chicago Press website [thanks Ross!]:

Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge : A View from Europe
by Jean-Noel Jeanneney, Ian Wilson (Foreword), Teresa Lavender Fagan (Translator)
Hardcover: 96 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0226395774

The recent announcement that Google will digitize the holdings of several major libraries sent shock waves through the book industry and academe. Google presented this digital repository as a first step towards a long-dreamed-of universal library, but skeptics were quick to raise a number of concerns about the potential for copyright infringement and unanticipated effects on the business of research and publishing.

Jean-Noël Jeanneney, president of France's Bibliothèque Nationale, here takes aim at what he sees as a far more troubling aspect of Google's Library Project: its potential to misrepresent—and even damage—the world’s cultural heritage. In this impassioned work, Jeanneney argues that Google's unsystematic digitization of books from a few partner libraries and its reliance on works written mostly in English constitute acts of selection that can only extend the dominance of American culture abroad. This danger is made evident by a Google book search the author discusses here—one run on Hugo, Cervantes, Dante, and Goethe that resulted in just one non-English edition, and a German translation of Hugo at that. An archive that can so easily slight the masters of European literature—and whose development is driven by commercial interests—cannot provide the foundation for a universal library.

As a leading librarian, Jeanneney remains enthusiastic about the archival potential of the Web. But he argues that the short-term thinking characterized by Google's digital repository must be countered by long-term planning on the part of cultural and governmental institutions worldwide—a serious effort to create a truly comprehensive library, one based on the politics of inclusion and multiculturalism.

For those who are interested in this issue, a video stream of an argument offered by Lawrence Lessig [or else here] in favor of the Google project; or else read his article:

Google's Tough Call
By Lawrence Lessig (Wired Magazine Issue 13:11, Nov 2005)

And more info here:
Another Google Book Search Commentary Roundup
By Andrew Raff (IPTA Blog, Dec 2005)

Hawaiian Is Jailed for Hiding Artifacts -- Updates!

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@ STARBULLETIN.COM
Supporters and family of imprisoned Hui Malama leader Edward Ayau held vigils earlier this week outside the Federal Detention Center to pray for his release and that 83 Hawaiian artifacts under dispute would not be retrieved from secret burial caves.

From the Honolulu Star Bulletin, via archeologymagazine.com :

Judge says Hawaiians must settle artifact fight
Tradition, not court action, would be preferable, Ezra says
By Sally Apgar
[email protected]
January 6, 2006

A FEDERAL JUDGE ordered several native Hawaiian groups yesterday to resolve their differences over the final disposition of 83 artifacts, suggesting they pursue a Hawaiian form of conflict resolution on which they can all agree.

"This is not a dispute between the federal government and native Hawaiians. It is a dispute between native Hawaiians and native Hawaiians," said U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra. "We did not file this lawsuit."

In the meantime, Ezra refused to release Edward Halealoha Ayau, leader of Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei, from federal detention. Ayau was sent to prison last week for refusing to tell Ezra the location of the artifacts or the names of those who helped him rebury them.

[...]

Ezra said yesterday that the federal court "has the power and authority" to make a resolution "and jam it down someone's throat." However, Ezra said he prefers a "method within the framework of Hawaiian tradition" so the groups can resolve their differences "without direct court involvement."

"The whole idea is to take this out of the courtroom and put it back into the hands of the Hawaiians," he said. [read the full article]

More on the story from the Honolulu Advertiser :

This carved wood figure was among objects taken from a Big Island burial cave near Honokoa Gulch in Kawaihae by the Forbes Expedition in 1905.

Advertiser library photo

Dispute delivers praise and scorn to Hui Malama
One of the central issues is what constituted a 'loan'

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Staff Writer
January 13, 2005

[Excerpt] At the center of the dispute, which has been bubbling in Hawaiian circles for years, is the issue of a permanent home for the objects, which include a famous wooden female figure and several renowned stick 'aumakua.'

To comply with Ezra's order, Ayay said, would fly against his religious and cultural beliefs. [read the full article]

Read the original post