Protection of Digital Information
UC Berkeley Fall 1996
Friday Public Lecture Series
12-1, 105 Northgate Hall

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center and
School of Information Management & Systems


Friday October 11

Electronic Intellectual Property Management in Libraries

Brett Butler
Managing Director of Contec Data Systems

Distribution of full-text electronic information raises major issues that are important to content rightsholders, authors, publishers, libraries, and users. Issues include rights and permissions, statistical reporting (and potential privacy issues), fee collection, and ensuring the right of fair use.

The implementation of a system to handle online library reserve materials offers a microcosm of the problems that arise when trying to implement such a system. In this talk Brett Butler will describe the issues involved in creating a system in an academic library environment. He will discuss the various important modules and what they need to do, and give examples from a system he has helped design. And he will discuss how to assure publishers and rightsholders that this kind of electronic distribution of content will not threaten their interests.


Brett Butler is an industry pioneer in library automation, networking, and was founding president of Information Access Corporation, the developer of comprehensive general reference databases. As director of development for the Memex Research Institute he was one of the earliest to work on development of the electronic library concept, whose function was the digitizing of currently available library holdings. He has also served as president of InFour. Mr Butler is currently the Managing Director of Contec North America.


Sponsored by the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center and the
School of Information Management & Systems