Both librarians and artists struggle with the issue of intellectual property. Art librarianship demands that there be a productive and evolving dialog between "makers and keepers," if you will.
For example, our curators keep the video works by artists in the collection, galleries sell them as pricey editioned works of art, and I would like the library to be the access point to these works, but in order to do so, I must rely upon relationships with artists and persuading gallerists to allow me to secure copies for a reasonable sum of money.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of content being developed for the web that we plan to just start cataloging, since we do have open access. In a way, I want to advocate that kind of production by making intellectual trails to it, although, having fallen down more than one "YouTube holes" in my day, I embrace the serendipity of discovery already possible in their interactive world.
Stepping back a few more feet, the overall conversation going on is shared by more than artists and librarians - the media, even "the Google" are grappling with the idea of balancing content with delivery, and the results are indifferent and still somewhat experimental [I hope].
Some readings on the topic:
Artist Rights in the Digital Universe
A video from TED:
Clay Shirkey, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations is referenced in an article in the March Vanity Fair by Michael Wolff, "Ringside at the Web Fight."
"At its heart, the digital-behavior theory is that the old media business imposed unnatural behavior on its users - not least of all a strict divide between creators and audience."
There are natural concerns that all of these enthusiastic amateurs are creating such a huge mountain of crap, but I believe that artists and librarians are the remedy to that. Both create access to excellent content, when they succeed.
By the way, I love Shirky. I recommend his writing.
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