Symposium on Intellectual Property Rights held at SIUC

CARBONDALE, Ill. -Nationally prominent educators, librarians, attorneys and publishers known for their expertise on intellectual property issues met on April 23-25 at Southern Illinois University’s Student Center in Carbondale for the first Delyte W. Morris Library Symposium on Information Issues. Carolyn Snyder, Dean of Library Affairs and Jeanne Hurley Simon, chair of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and Adjunct Professor of Library Affairs served as honorary co-chairs of the symposium.

More than 140 people attended the symposium, which included sessions on the expansion of intellectual property law in this decade, the difficulties in balancing the rights of copyright holders with the right of access, what the libraries of the future might be like if Congress enacts more restrictive copyright regulations, and other topics. The symposium began with a workshop presented by Indiana University law professor Kenneth D. Crews, head of Indiana and Purdue Universities’ Copyright Management Center in Indianapolis. Crews sketched out the key principles of copyright in the educational environment, the developing tensions between law and technology, and current trends in this fast-changing arena.

Other featured speakers were Mary E. Jackson, Association of Research Libraries’ access and delivery services consultant and an authority on copyright in a networked environment; James Neal, Johns Hopkins University libraries director and an advisor to the U.S. delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization Diplomatic Conference on Copyright; Robert Oakley, Georgetown University Law Center professor and library director and an expert on the Copyright Act; and former Congresswoman Patricia S. Schroeder, now president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers Inc.