Hi Richard, Sorry for the very slow response to your on-list proposal for a Research SIG. As you'll know from our conference chat, I am definitely up for this and thanks for putting it forward.
As you suggest, it's probably a good idea to take a fairly loose approach to what constitutes research; aside from anything else, it's going to take a little time for the group to find an identity and settle on a shared set of concerns and it would be a shame to deter people that might otherwise be interested. On the one hand, I'll want to be able to share with others going through the process of academic research in the digital/digitised heritage sphere (small though this ball may be); on the other, I'm of course interested in the sort of research that focusses on specific solutions to informatic problems for museums, although these may well have more of an applied than academic bent. But doubtless there's plenty of overlap between the two so it could be hard to try to disentangle them anyway. That being said, I'm pretty much invisible in the forums to which I am already subscribed so I can imagine that my involvement with such a SIG might focus mainly around face to face meetings at conferences. In other words, I'm not volunteering to chair, I'm afraid! But, despite the warm welcome the Taiwan SIG gave me and others at their meeting at the conference, I'm not currently involved in any SIGs so I don't really have a clear idea of how they operate or what they offer. Cheers, Jeremy Jeremy Ottevanger Web Developer, Museum Systems Team Museum of London Group 46 Eagle Wharf Road London. N1 7ED Tel: 020 7410 2207 Fax: 020 7600 1058 Email: jottevanger at museumoflondon.org.uk www.museumoflondon.org.uk Visit Belonging: Voices of London's Refugees - a new thought-provoking free exhibition Glamour, grandeur, sleaze, disease - discover a great city in the making at the Museum of London Register for regular Museum updates with enews at museumoflondon.org.uk
