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Dear MCN colleagues, The Visual Resources Association Foundation is pleased to announce a $26,400 grant from The Getty Foundation to support the initiative, "Implementing CCO: Standards and Best Practices." The grant is intended to advance development of a de-facto standard for contributing cultural and natural history collections to union catalogs and digital repositories. Part I will support a strategic and dissemination meeting for the CDWA-Lite Working Group and Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) representatives with the goal of unveiling a new international schema that will replace CDWA-Lite and Museumdat. The CDWA-Lite schema is based on the Categories for the Description of Works of Art. The CCO representation includes a member of the Visual Resources Association Data Standards Committee to ensure that the new schema is compatible with the VRA Core 4.0. The meeting is not only to give CCO stakeholders an opportunity to respond to the new schema, but also to take advantage of face-to-face discussions with one another and tackle CCO specific business. The CCO specific business includes developing a three-year strategic plan for implementing CCO practice among contributors of cultural and natural history collections to union catalogs and digital repositories. The strategic planning and dissemination meeting will take place on November 15, 2008 (concurrent with the Museum Computer Network (MCN) annual conference) in Washington, D.C. Part II of this endeavor is to work on how best to integrate CCO with this new schema and standards-based model, especially in how it will be implemented by vendors, or work in conjunction with existing standards. For CCO, this would entail making portions of the printed Guide more accessible through the CCO Commons web site, and to develop prototype online training tools on how to use the guidelines in conjunction with these new and existing standards. These prototypes may be used in other training contexts in the museum and visual resources community (e.g., the ARLIS/VRAF Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management). A representative from the Summer Institute Advisory Group will be attending the meeting as part of the CCO representation. The mission of the Visual Resources Foundation is to advance knowledge in the field of visual resources and image management and to provide educational and training opportunities in support of broad access to cultural information in the digital age. The Foundation advances awareness of important issues for digital information management; encourages the application of professional standards, innovative technology, and metadata cataloging protocols; facilitates workplace training; and promotes awareness of intellectual property rights and copyright issues. The VRA Foundation supports a range of educational offerings to help ensure that such information reaches a diverse and global audience. Additional information is available at http://www.vrafoundation.org The Getty Foundation provides support to individuals and institutions committed to advancing the understanding and preservation of the visual arts locally and throughout the world. Through strategic grants and programs, the Los Angeles-based Foundation strengthens art history as a global discipline, increases access to collections, promotes the interdisciplinary practice of conservation, and develops current and future leaders in the visual arts. The Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural institution devoted to the visual arts. Additional information is available at http://www.getty.edu/foundation For more information about Cataloging Cultural Objects, contact the CCO co-chairs, Elisa Lanzi at elanzi at email.smith.edu or Ann Whiteside at awhites at mit.edu. CCO http://www.vrafoundation.org/ccoweb/index.htm CDWA-Lite http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/cdwa/cdwalite.html Museum-dat http://www.museumdat.org/index.php?ln=en Museum Computer Network http://www.mcn.edu/ ARLIS/VRAF Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management http://www.vraweb.org/seiweb/ VRA Core 4.0 http://www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/index.html Regards, Elisa Elisa Lanzi Director, Imaging Center Smith College Dept. of Art Hillyer Hall 22 Elm Street Northampton, MA 01063 VOICE: 413.585.3106 elanzi at email.smith.edu FAX: 413.585.3119 http://www.smith.edu/imaging
