What Happened at the Annual Meeting?
NSDL’s Annual Meeting last week attracted 200 passionate digital omnivores who learned about 117 projects by viewing 59 posters and attending 34 sessions in less than two days in Arlington, VA. Remnants from that intellectual explosion can be viewed at the meeting’s home page, which contains the program, abstracts of the posters, a survey where attendees can state their preferences for future conferences, and a list of attendees. You can see more at the “Road Reports” page in NSDL’s Expert Voices blogosphere, which contains descriptions of various panel discussions, an elegy for Bob Peck Chevrolet, and a thoughtful review by conference veteran Susan Jesuroga. And don’t miss the new blog from Lee Zia, Lead Program Director for NSDL at the National Science Foundation, which begins with his newest set of Annual Meeting Haikus.

NCore’s Silent Takeover of NSDL
Earlier this year, the platform that powers NSDL changed and very few people noticed. That was what the developers hoped would happen. The new platform, NCore, made NSDL far more flexible because it is based on the Fedora Commons. NCore allows NSDL to add all kinds of next-generation library services and collaborative tools, a process that is now gaining momentum. Dean Krafft and other developers from NSDL’s Core Integration staff described NCore and these tools at an Annual Meeting session entitled “Working with the NSDL 2.0 Data Repository.” One of those new collaborative tools is the NSDL Wiki, which contains a wiki page where developers discuss the many facets of the shift to NSDL 2.0. More information is also available at a November 13 post on the Expert Voices blog “NSDL Highlights.”

Untangling Copyright Confusion
Copyright law is confusing. Whiteboard Report got it wrong in issue #123 when we reported that early sound recordings were in the public domain; the correct answer is “rarely,” according to Peter Hirtle, Intellectual Property Officer for the Cornell University Library. Early recordings were made before federal copyright laws for recordings went into effect, but are still protected by state common law copyrights. The extent of protection available under such laws is unclear, however. Hirtle maintains a chart that illustrates the legal thicket on copyright duration, and his new update reviews the laws on sound recordings and architectural works. Our thanks to him for setting us straight.