ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 5 7 2 / C&RL News i tl . Intellectual property bills A full agenda on intellectual property an d other issues is expected for library support­ Wash ers this fall. The president finally sent to th e Senate tw o treaties Ho n e g o tia te d in D e c e m b e r 1996 at the World Intellec­ tual Property O rganization Lynne E (WIPO) meetings. The ad­ ministration deferred trans­ mittal o f the treaties w hile the nature and scope o f legislation to im plem ent them w as hotly debated w ithin the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and within the Department o f Commerce. At the same time, the president sent “imple­ menting legislation,” now referred to the Judi­ ciary Committees o f both houses o f Congress. The adm inistration’s implementing bill w as in­ troduced in the H ouse as H.R. 2281 by Reps. Henry Hyde (R-IL) and Jo h n Conyers (D-MI), an d o f the Subcommittee o n Intellectual Prop­ erty, Reps. How ard Coble (R-NC) and Barney Frank (D-MA). Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R- UT) are reviewing the bill for possible intro­ duction in the Senate. The bill is similar to the “White Paper” pro­ posals in the last Congress, strongly o pposed in their original form by ALA and other m em ­ bers of the Digital Future Coalition (DFC). This year’s bill w ould m ake it illegal to manufac­ ture, im port, or distribute “any technology, product, service, device, com ponent o r part thereof that . . . is primarily designed or pro­ du ced for the purpose of circumventing” any technological system em ployed effectively to control access to copyrighted material. It would also subject violators to civil fines an d criminal penalties. ALA and many library, educational, and con­ sum er organizations, as well as electronic de­ vice manufacturers, contend that basic flaws in the adm inistration’s approach remain because it w ould outlaw the m anufacture o f multipur­ pose devices (personal com puters, VCRs, etc.) L ynne E. B radley is deputy executive director o f A L A ’s W ashington Office; e-mail: leb@alawash.org. n eed ed by users to exercise “fair u s e ” an d o th e r privi­ ngton leges for the use of materi­ als protected u n d er current copyright law. ine D ebate o n online service providers, liability continues with the introduction o f H.R. 2180. Many information pro­ prietors wish to hold liable Bradley for copyright infringem ent any party, including a school or library, w ho provides net­ work facilities to som eone w ho misuses them to violate a proprietor’s copyright, or w ho provides a link to a site on the Internet w here infringing material may be accessed. H.R. 2180 appears to be a better starting point for negotiations. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will conduct a hearing this fall on the subject, at which Professor Robert Oakley o f G eorgetow n University Law Center and the director o f its library will testify o n behalf o f 17 major national library an d educational organi­ zations. D ebate also continues o n h ow best to defend and update the fair use and first sale doctrines, on w hich so m uch research an d li­ brary lending itself are based. For m ore infor­ mation consult the ALA W ashington Office Web site at http://w w w .ala.org/w ashoff o r contact Adam Eisgrau at the ALA W ashington Office at (800) 941-8478. FY98 appropriations and higher education H ouse and Senate Appropriations Committees issued their bills (H.R. 2264 and S. 10619 and reports (H. Rept. 105-205 and S. Rept. 105-58) on the FY98 Labor, Health and H uman Services, and Education Appropriations. The House w ould increase the college work- study program to $860 million. “The Commit­ tee considers this program to be am ong the highest priorities … an d has limited funds for low er priority programs elsew here in order to increase funding … ” (H. Rept. 105-205). The Senate bill proposes $830 million, the same as current funding. The administration requested $857 million for this program. The Senate re­ port notes “th e Com mittee believes that the (W ashington H otline cont. on p a g e 582) mailto:leb@alawash.org http://www.ala.org/washoff 5 8 2 / C&RL News Virginia Union University, one of the his­ torically black colleges and universities, received $200,000 from the Lilly Endowment to encour­ age faculty, staff, students, and the community to use its new library and resource center. A c q u is it io n s The papers of W illiam M axw ell, legend­ ary editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1976, have been acquired by the University o f Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The papers in­ clude more than 5,000 letters to Maxwell from some of the country’s greatest writers from 1936 to the present, all of w hom w ere edited by Max­ well for The New Yorker. They include: John Updike, J. D. Salinger, Jo h n Cheever, Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy, Wil­ liam Carlos Williams, Tennessee Williams, John O ’Hara, and Frank O ’Connor. Also included in the collection are hand-corrected typescripts of nearly all o f Maxwell’s ow n novels, and first editions and foreign-language editions of his books. Maxwell attended UIUC both as an u n ­ dergraduate and as a graduate student. A 3 ,4 0 0 -v o lu m e collection of books about submarines an d subm arine warfare was recently d o n ated to the Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy, by the family o f the late Tho­ mas O. Paine, ad­ m in i s tr a to r o f NASA at the time o f the first moon landings. In April th e b o o k s w e r e presented at a cer­ em ony held at the academy. The cer­ em ony recognized and memorialized th e contributions of the navy’s sub­ m a r in e s e rv ic e , and dedicated and celebrated the gift b oth o f the Paine collection and o f a This g lass scu lp tu re giv en to th e U.S. Naval Academ y h o n o r s tw o n u clear su b ­ m a r in es lo st at sea. g la s s s c u lp tu r e honoring the two American nuclear submarines lost at sea— USS Thresher (1963) and USS Scorpion (1968). D onations from 12 academ y graduating classes funded the memorial and the catalog­ ing of the Paine Collection, the latter enabling the library to accept the gift. The Hugh Kenner Archive has been ac­ quired by the Harry Ransom Humanities Re­ search Center. H ugh Kenner, considered by many the prem ier scholar-critic of literary m od­ ernism, is the author o f 25 books, critical es­ says that have ap p eared in som e 200 b ook publications, an d nearly 1,000 pieces for p eri­ odicals. From his early 1951 study, The Poetry o f E zra Pound, to his m onum ental survey in 1971, The P o u n d Era, an d continuing in 1989 an d 1990 w ith his tw o collections of essays, M a zes an d H istorical Fictions, K enner has m ap p ed the m odernist terrain. The archive en ­ com passes the entire range o f m aterials re­ flecting the production o f th e critic’s books, reviews, articles, an d introductions. The p u b ­ lication record o f Kenner’s books is represented by his files o n the various subject authors and by his ow n manuscripts, typescripts, galley and page proofs, correspondence w ith authors and publishers, an d graphics. The archives also co n tain interview s w ith an d articles a b o u t Kenner, as well as his awards, honors, and honorary degrees. ■ (W ashington H otline co n t.fr o m pa g e 572) community service requirem ents, as part o f the student’s overall academic program, are espe­ cially co m p atib le w ith th e ad m in istratio n ’s America Reads initiative.” The H ouse report notes that the administration’s decision to waive the institutional matching requirem ents associ­ ated with certain community service, such as the pro p o sed America Reads Challenge, “is es­ timated by the D epartm ent to result in a reduc­ tion of 15,000 students served and the loss of $16,000,000 to the program in matching funds during the 1997-1998 school year.” For educational research and statistics, the H ouse bill proposes $244.2 million, the Senate bill $210.7 million. Current funding is $206.2 million. The adm inistration requested $239-2 million for research institutes, including those in postsecondary education, libraries, and life­ long learning research, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Library of Edu­ cation, and the ERIC system. ■