INDIANAPOLIS, IN.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art and American Alliance of Museums (AAM) announced the release of the much-anticipated publication, Rights & Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions. The release marks the culmination of the two-year National Leadership Grant awarded to the IMA by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in Sept. 2013.

Co-published by the IMA and AAM, the publication is the first of its kind and will serve as an industry-wide standard of emerging best practices and guidelines in the rights and reproductions field. Anne M. Young, the IMA’s manager of rights and reproductions, served as project director, editor and one of the contributing authors to the Handbook. Content development was guided by over 20 top experts in museums and libraries, intellectual property lawyers and collection specialists who partnered in its authoring, editing and peer review. Partnering institutions include The Art Institute of Chicago, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the libraries at the University of Michigan and University of Minnesota, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The New York Public Library and Yale University Art Gallery.

"AAM is proud to be publishing this ground-breaking digital handbook on intellectual property law, fair use, licensing, publications, websites and open access, something the museum field has needed for a long time,” said Laura L. Lott, President and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums. “I congratulate the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Institute of Museum and Library Services for their vision and support for this project, and I applaud Anne Young and her cadre of two dozen experts who worked tirelessly over the past two years to produce this definitive, 412-page handbook that can now be downloaded onto every museum professional's desktop."

“The Indianapolis Museum of Art is honored to lead this publication to fruition, which continues not only our long-standing involvement in the rights and reproductions field, but also our commitment to digital publishing platforms,” said Dr. Charles L. Venable, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO at the IMA. “The IMA is dedicated to continued service to the field, and this publication is an important step for all who deal with the complicated world of image rights on a daily basis.

The Handbook was produced utilizing the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI) Toolkit that was created by the IMA Lab, the media and technology arm of the IMA, with the support of the Getty Foundation. This is the first reference resource created with the OSCI Toolkit and exported as an e-book file (non-device specific). The digital platform allows the Handbook to be regularly updated to reflect changing practices in the field or intellectual property laws. To ensure this, a publication sustainability committee comprised of contributing authors and legal review panelists will be formed to conduct annual reviews and advise the IMA and AAM of any suggested content edits.

Highlights of this digital format include direct hyperlinks to external sources and related articles within the footnotes, appendices and bibliography; embedded video files; and over 100 pages of document and contract templates.

In addition to the unique features of the digital platform, the Handbook addresses numerous topics that rights and reproductions specialists at cultural institutions encounter daily, including:

An overview of Intellectual Property (IP) law, ethics and risk (in the United States) and compared with the broad differences found in international IP rights.
Rights issues in permanent collections: determining the rights status of collection objects, identifying rights holders and preparing non-exclusive licenses.
Uses of materials, including, but not limited to, publications and exhibitions, educational materials, websites and social media, marketing and promotion, retail and commercial products, licensing materials to external users, and evolving photography policies.

Varying processes employed for clearing permissions and sourcing materials, as well as when a utilization of fair use is appropriate and the types of attribution required.