About

Rob Lancefield (retired) was Head of IT at the Yale Center for British Art. Before that, he led digital work at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, where he led the development and launch of DAC Open Access Images in 2012. Rob is the immediate past chair of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Council of Affiliates, a council of leadership representatives from 28 national and international organizations in the museum field; a former president of the Museum Computer Network (MCN), the professional organization for people who do digital work in museums; and a co-founding member of the ImageMuse discussion group, which now connects more than 500 digital imaging professionals in museums and other cultural organizations. He continues to be actively engaged in the cultural heritage sector.

Education

Ph.D., Ethnomusicology: Wesleyan University. Dissertation: “Hearing orientality in (white) America, 1900–1930” (ProQuest 3167976).

M.A., Music: Wesleyan University. Thesis: “On the repatriation of recorded sound from ethnomusicological archives” (ProQuest 1354933).

B.A., Music: Wesleyan University. First in class, high honors, Phi Beta Kappa, National Merit Scholar.

Mastodon Feed

Wow. This is huge news for anyone who uses Finale music notation software. 😮 And it’s on a very short timeline as such things go. https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/end-of-finale-new-journey-dorico-letter-from-president/ (2024-08-26 ↗)


“Moving Institutions toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey” “How common is it for cultural organisations to permit the free reuse of their digitised public domain collections? Where are these materials published online, and under what conditions? Since 2018, [ @CultureDoug ] and Andrea Wallace’s Open GLAM Survey has been…providing valuable insights into open access activity within…galleries, libraries, archives and museums….” #OpenAccess #OpenCulture https://creativecommons.org/2024/06/26/moving-institutions-toward-open-building-on-6-years-of-the-open-glam-survey/ (2024-06-26 ↗)


“Throughout the document, we outline specific technical guidelines for various modes of modern digital lending, including how to lend digital books when an e-book license was not available at the time of digitization, how to work with publishers to allow for CDL of their undigitized backfile, and how to address digitization concerns about special and irreplaceable physical objects.” https://libraryfutures.net/post/niso-cdl-statement (2024-06-20 ↗)


“Today, Creative Commons is releasing new guidelines for open culture: Nudging Users to Reference Institutions When Using Public Domain Materials.” #OpenCulture #PublicDomain #MuseTech https://creativecommons.org/2024/02/23/helping-users-refer-to-host-institutions/ (2024-02-23 ↗)


“Italian Court Orders Getty Images to Remove Photos of Michelangelo’s David”: “You may be wondering why Italian authorities are enforcing copyright on a 500-year-old statue that has long passed into the public domain.” #PublicDomain #OpenCulture https://petapixel.com/2024/02/01/italian-court-orders-getty-images-to-remove-photos-of-michelangelos-david/ (2024-02-01 ↗)


Blog Posts

    Publications

    2019. Co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, edited by Frank Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, and Bret Woods. New York: Oxford University Press.

    2007. “Museum Images Online: Meeting the Needs of Educators.” With David Green, et al., in Museums & the Web 2007 Proceedings online (Archives & Museum Informatics).

    2003. “Performing Images, Embodying Race.” Exhibition brochure with essay and suggested reading list, written as exhibition curator (Middletown, CT: Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University).

    2001. “Museum Standards, Markup, and XML for Beginners.” Invited contribution to special issue of Spectra 28 (2), 24–27; reprinted by invitation in the VRA Bulletin 28 (4), 21–26.

    1998. “Musical Traces’ Retraceable Paths: Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Repatriation.Journal of Folklore Research 35 (1), 47–68. To be reprinted in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation (forthcoming 2019).

    1998. Review of Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation (Rutgers University Press, 1997). Yearbook for Traditional Music 30 (1998), 133–35.

    Projects

    Two key projects (please see LinkedIn for more):

    • Developed the DAC Open Access Images policy at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, led the internal process of gaining institutional approvals for it, and designed and implemented a technical architecture for open image delivery that leveraged existing enterprise platforms; the policy went into formal effect in 2012 for suitable images conveyed by staff to requestors, and one-click public download of open access images followed in 2013.

    • Designed and directed a sequence of five intensive summer projects to digitize thousands of works of art on paper in the Davison Art Center collection and make the resulting images as widely available as copyright allowed, with more than 6,000 DAC Open Access Images provided online by 2019; wrote two successful applications for multi-year IMLS Museums for America grants to support this work; hired and led each summer’s project team.

    Rob Lancefield

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    @roblancefield

    Active 2 years, 10 months ago