Nancy Kopans is Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of ITHAKA, www.ithaka.org, a not-for-profit organization that works with the global higher educational community to advance and preserve knowledge and to improve teaching and learning through the use of digital technologies. ITHAKA has launched some of the most transformative and widely used services in higher education: Ithaka S+R, JSTOR, and Portico. Recently ITHAKA has enhanced its mission through a strategic alliance with Artstor, facilitating access to its services for researchers, teachers, and students worldwide.
Kopans in an expert on copyright law, particularly in connection with the transition of content from an analog to a digital environment and balancing the interests of content creators, online users, and digital platforms. She is a member of the Association of American Publishers’ Copyright Committee, the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee’s Government Relations Subcommittee, and the American Bar Association, Section on Intellectual Property Law, where she served as Chair of the ABA Committee on Database Protection Legislation’s Subcommittee on Protection of U.S. Databases. Kopans served as a member of the Section 108 Study Group, convened by the Library of Congress to make recommendations on updating for the digital world the Copyright Act's balance between the rights of creators and copyright owners and the needs of libraries and archives. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Century Association Archives Foundation and the Board of Advisors of The Copyright Society. Kopans received a B.A. from Dartmouth College, an M.A., and M. Phil. from Columbia University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University.
