1. The meeting was called to order by Lewis Ulman, Chair.

2. Intellectual Property Rights--intellectual Property Rights concerning digital media are of concern to the development of a Knowledge Bank at OSU, as well as to classroom efforts to digitize existing documents. In the latter regard, Louis Ulman's English 569C class this quarter digitized the letters of Sophia Hawthorne; he passed out a copy of the Editorial Guidelines and Standards that were used by the students in the class. He also distributed Managing Intellectual Property Rights Online: A Case in Point, a listing of points that need to be considered in dealing with electronic documents. The standards that were followed during the class project were the following:

• The NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials
• Text Encoding Initiative: The XML Version of the TEI Guidelines
• W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium
• MLA: Modern Language Association

In projects such as this, the students who worked on the project own the coding--the intellectual content--that is added to the documents; it's important that they sign waivers if the final product is to be made available for use by others. Students own their work; staff are considered "work for hire". Intellectual property rights is separate from patents, trademark, and licensing, and will have an impact on the Knowledge Bank project. At MIT the faculty sign an agreement that they retain copyright for items that are put into DSpace. A policy needs to be developed for the University in this area; the faculty should come up with a proposed policy that best meets their needs before seeking legal advice. Further information will be sought as to how other universities have dealt with the problem of student authorship and other aspects of intellectual property rights. Alan Escovitz, Susan Metros, Bob Kalal, Ilee Rhimes, Lewis Ulman, and Joe Branin are scheduled to meet with Dave Winwood on March 27; a policy is needed that will enhance and not impede.

3. ERIC--The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a national information system funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide access to education literature and resources. Word has been received that there are plans to drastically shrink the ERIC system by centralizing functions, e.g., indexing and Web information, that have been performed by a variety of subject-specific ERIC Clearinghouses. Further information on what is planned and contact information for Council members who may wish to voice their concerns will be obtained and sent to the Council listserv.

Betty Sawyers for
Joseph Branin & Ilee Rhimes