Wisconsin Health Science Library Association

Speaker: Tomas A. Lipinski, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Biography: Tomas A. Lipinski earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Marquette University Law School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Master of Laws (LL.M.) from The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois, and the Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Lipinski has worked in a variety of legal settings including the private, public and non-profit sectors. He has taught at the American Institute for Paralegal Studies and at Syracuse University College of Law. In summers he is a visiting associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and at the Department of Information Science, School of Information Technology at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.

Professor Lipinski currently teaches, researches and speaks frequently on various topics within the areas of information law and policy, especially copyright issues in schools and libraries, and serves as Co-Director of the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an Associate Professor at its School of Information Studies.

Abstract: Recent cases and legislation have brought libraries and their educational parent organizations to the forefront of the national information debate from the copyright term extension and library filtering cases before the Supreme Court to distance education copyright reform and pending legislation on the protection of databases and, of course, the USA PATRIOT Act. This keynote provides a recap of the past year or two of developments and looks to future challenges as well.