Victoria Owen

IFLA is very pleased to announce that Governing Board has appointed Victoria Owen as the new Chair of IFLA’s Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM) Committee for the period 2011-2013. Victoria will replace the current Chair, Winston Tabb of Johns Hopkins University, at the end of the World Library and Information Congress in Puerto Rico in August 2011.

Victoria Owen is the Head Librarian at the University of Toronto Scarborough in Toronto, Canada, and is also the current Chair of the Canadian Library Association Copyright Committee. Victoria served on the CLM Committee between 2005 and 2009, and has been an Expert Resource Person appointed by the current Chair since 2009. She has been extensively involved in IFLA’s activities at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) since 2008, participated in an IFLA CLM delegation to Uruguay in September 2010, and has been part of a team working on a Draft Treaty on Copyright Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives which was launched at the IFLA Presidential Meeting in April 2011.

In accepting the appointment, Victoria said "It is indeed an honour. I appreciate that the members of IFLA Governing Board have appointed me to this role and I am committed to the work of the Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM) Committee. I am conscious of CLM’s responsibility in advising and informing IFLA on copyright and other legal issues of significance to libraries and look forward to working with my CLM colleagues, who are among the most competent, committed and knowledgeable individuals, to accomplish this over the course of my term."

Winston Tabb to become CLM Expert Resource Person with a special brief for WIPO matters

Winston Tabb

IFLA and its library partners are about to enter a busy 18 months at WIPO as work on exceptions and limitations for the visually impaired, libraries and archives, and education intensifies. In recognition of this, and the extensive work that he has carried out in relation to IFLA’s advocacy at WIPO, the Governing Board asked Winston Tabb to take on a new role of CLM Expert Resource Person with a special brief for WIPO matters for the period 2011-2013. IFLA is happy to report that Winston has agreed to take up this position when he steps down as CLM Chair in August 2011. He will continue to lead the library delegation at WIPO where he will work with Victoria and other library and archive representatives on the exceptions and limitations work programme. Acknowledging this appointment, Winston said "Getting libraries firmly on WIPO’s agenda has been an arduous but very rewarding journey for IFLA over the past few years. Now that we have succeeded, the hard work begins of securing broad international support to resolve the specific copyright problems librarians have repeatedly told CLM about. I feel both honoured and excited that the Governing Board has asked me to work with Victoria in this next, critical phase of our work in Geneva."