"Abstract: Shortly after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, Kanan Makiya, a long time Iraqi dissident and professor of Middle East studies at Brandeis University, uncovered a major trove of documents belonging to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and his security forces. The documents proved highly important in reflecting the inner workings of the Baath Party system in his final years in power. Soon after the discovery of the documents, the Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF), a private Washington, D.C.–based group founded by Makiya, took custody of the records, later depositing them with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to provide a safe haven for them. The deal ignited immediate international controversy and charges of pillage from some Iraqi officials, archival organizations, scholars, and others who also demanded their immediate return to the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad. On the surface, these charges of theft and plunder appear plausible enough, but on examination, a different and complicated narrative emerges in light of the conventions of war, U.S. law, and the Iraqi penal code, as well as the chain of events surrounding their taking and removal by nonstate actors in the Iraqi theatre of war and occupation."
Full Text: International Journal of Cultural Property (2011), p. 309 ff (PDF)

" .... Jurist Douglas Cox of the City University of New York School of Law says that the Kuwaiti national archives, which were taken by Iraqi forces in 1990, have still not been returned and keep the post-Saddam Iraq under a UN Security Council resolution aimed at having the documents returned..."
Douglas Cox, Finding Kuwait's Missing National Archives, JURIST - Forum, Jan. 23, 2012, http://jurist.org/forum/2012/01/douglas-cox-kuwait-archives.php.

For more: http://www.docexblog.com/2012/01/more-on-finding-kuwaits-missing.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/2012121132641226409.html

Excerpt:

Appealing to the tastes of package tourists and neglecting the interest of ordinary Egyptians, the Antiquities Council has long scorned what cannot be displayed in expensive vitrines and hastily photographed. Egypt's post-"Islamic" - and particularly its 19th and 20th century - culture has therefore been ignored, if not actively denigrated, by the Council.

Most recently, the furore over the alleged smuggling and sale of Naguib Mahfouz's archives has made more visible than ever the state's failure to safeguard its "modern" heritage. Although Sotheby's would eventually call the auction off, the patriotic Egyptian public was infuriated. It provoked the country's preeminent newspapers to ask how the manuscripts of Egypt's Nobel Laureate could be sold in the chambers of a foreign auction house, and why the state had not intervened to protect them. And yet, the Mahfouz sale further prompts the more important question: where and with whom should the private papers of public personalities be deposited?

For example, at his death earlier this month, Egypt's celebrated novelist Ibrahim Aslan left behind a number of unpublished manuscripts. How could his heirs, should they so wish, make this material accessible to an interested public?

In theory, the answer is easy - either the National Archives of Egypt or the adjacent "Dar al-Kutub". But in practice, the logic by which both institutions operate makes this issue a lot more complicated than it first appears to be.

Essentially, the current National Archive is descended from a series of disparate document repositories cobbled together in the 1920s. This new centralised archive was designed to provide the infrastructure behind professional history writing, which aimed to forge a monolithic national (and more importantly monarchical) identity for the country. During this state-building period, documents that did not promote a certain view of Egyptian history, and the reigning monarchy of the time, were either discarded or destroyed.

True to its etymological origins, the National Archive of Egypt continues to be held within the state's coercive grip. State security plays arbiter. Despite the efforts of Egypt's preeminent historian, Khaled Fahmy, it continues to viciously restrict access to the documents to all but a privileged few: These tend to be professional historians whose research is perceived as non-subversive to the state and its narratives, which are overwhelmingly nationalist.

For the Record - Library & Archives Canada from Jeff Lively on Vimeo.

"Worked as the Creative Director to produce an awareness piece intended for the general public to explain what LAC does & why basically.

A combination of motion graphics & live action video. I shot the original footage using the Canon 5D DSLR and the Kessler Phillip Bloom Slider.

Written & produced by Hyperactive Productions for Library & Archives Canada. "

http://www.connectedhistories.org/

"Connected Histories brings together a range of digital resources related to early modern and nineteenth century Britain with a single federated search that allows sophisticated searching of names, places and dates, as well as the ability to save, connect and share resources within a personal workspace."

Alexej Jawlensky also died in 1941.



http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Alexej_von_Jawlensky

See also
http://archivalia.tumblr.com/tagged/copyright

http://www.medievalists.net/2011/12/26/top-10-medieval-news-stories-of-2011/

#10: The mayor of the southern French town of Saint Emilion has discreetly sold off its 14th century Cordeliers cloister to a private winemaker, leaving local residents shocked and upset.

http://www.medievalists.net/2011/11/15/french-towns-sells-off-14th-century-cloister-to-pay-debts/


Photo: Delphine Ménard http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.de

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries is deeply disappointed in the recent ruling by the Tennessee Appeals Court, of November 29, 2011, that allows Fisk University to sell fifty percent of its Stieglitz collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum to raise funds for the university’s operating budget. We believe that this action irrevocably damages the public’s trust in the university and its art galleries.



According to the best standards of the museum profession, as delineated by the American Association of Museums, works from a museum’s permanent collection may be deaccessioned following a thoughtful, written procedure, but all funds from the sale of deaccessioned work may only be used to acquire new works or for direct care (including conserving other works in the collection). Such funds may not be used neither to support the museum’s general operations, nor may they be used to fund the operations of a parent institution. Museum supporters, including donors of works of art, are unlikely to continue their support of a museum that has no control over its professional practices.



Further, such disposal of work undermines the mission of the academic museum, whose collections directly support pedagogical programs and the appreciation of art for the general public.



The AAMG, which has more than 400 members across the country, joins the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in its statement of December 8, 2011, in condemning the ruling and proposed partial sale of the Stieglitz collection. The proposed use of the deaccession funds stands in opposition to the ethical and professional standards established by the museum field and threatens the integrity of all university collections.

Jill Hartz, Executive Director
President, Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
1223 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1223
Tel: 541.346.0972
Fax: 541.346.0976
Cell: 541.868.4138

--
Kris Anderson
Jacob Lawrence Gallery
School of Art
University of Washington
------------
Vice President of Communications
Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

Via AAMG-L

AAMD-Statement
http://www.aamd.org/newsroom/documents/2011_12_8_11FinalAAMDStatementRegardingStieglitzCollectionatFiskUniversity.doc

David Prosser in Liblicense:

The UK Government has just published its Innovation and Research
Strategy for Growth, outlining how it will support research and
development through the UK's universities:

http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/i/11-1387-innovation-and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf

Of particular interest to readers of this list will be section 6.6
onwards which deal with access to research outputs. To quote:

"The Government, in line with our overarching commitment to
transparency and open data, is committed to ensuring that
publicly-funded research should be accessible free of charge. Free and
open access to taxpayer-funded research offers significant social and
economic benefits by spreading knowledge, raising the prestige of UK
research and encouraging technology transfer. At the moment, such
research is often difficult to find and expensive to access. This can
defeat the original purpose of taxpayer-funded academic research and
limits understanding and innovation. ... But we need to go much
further if, as a nation, we are to gain the full potential benefits of
publicly-funded research."

Taken together with the UK's Science Minister's recent interview in
the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/08/publicly-funded-research-open-access

this signifies the strongest commitment to open access we have seen
from the UK Government.