Date: Mon, 17 Nov 97 13:48:11 PST From: "Katharine Martinez" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: RLG's Cultural Heritage and Museum Object Information Resource
The Research Libraries Group (www.rlg.org/) is launching an initiative to improve access to information about works of art, architecture, visual culture, and material culture found in museums, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions. The result will be a web-accessible database of object records linked to visual images and, in some cases, associated texts. During the first phase of the initiative RLG will load data drawn from several sources, including RLG's REACH Project (www.rlg.org/reach.html), the Getty's Provenance Index (www.ahip.getty.edu/gii/prov.html), and the VISION Project for shared visual resources records (www.rlg.org/pr/9711vis.html) a joint effort of RLG and the Visual Resources Association with support from the Getty Information Institute (www.gii.getty.edu/). Researchers using the new database will benefit from the enhanced searching capability that RLG is developing in Eureka, RLG's web-based search engine. "Enhanced searching" will utilize two Getty Information Institute vocabularies -- the Art & Architecture Thesaurus and the Union List of Artist Names -- to facilitate searching across records that contain varying versions of terms or names. REACH Project The REACH Project (www.rlg.org/reach.html) is an effort to create a testbed database of museum object records. The goal is to export existing machine-readable data from heterogeneous museum collection management systems and analyze the research value of the resulting database when researchers use a single interface to search the database in conjunction with RLG's other resources, including bibliographic and archival records in RLIN, auction catalog records in the SCIPIO database, finding aids, plus abstracting and indexing tools such as the Bibliography of the History of Art, and Anthropological Literature. VISION Project The VISION Project for shared visual resources records (www.rlg.org/pr/9711vis.html) is a joint effort of RLG and the Visual Resources Association with support from the Getty Information Institute (www.gii.getty.edu/). This effort is designed to bring more visual resources information online; promulgate and test the use of standards for creating and sharing such information; and evaluate the new data's value in the context of existing RLG research information databases. VISION and REACH records will both go into the new RLG union catalog for museum objects and image records, accessible through the Web. ARCHES RLG's server for digital collections, called ARCHES (www.rlg.org/demo/webdoc.html), provides a "home" for digitized images and texts that may accompany object records in the new database. The ARCHES infrastructure supports links between descriptive (cataloging) records, mid-level metadata (such as archival finding aids), and whole digitized information objects (such as articles and visual images) wherever they may reside. This infrastructure includes navigational tools plus a full suite of access control and management functions, which ensure that rights holders and other value-added providers can restrict and/or charge for the use of their documents, if necessary. AMICO RLG's new resource for art and artifact information may also be enhanced by data, texts, and images coming from AMICO, the Art Museum Image Consortium (www.amn.org/AMICO/). Discussions are currently underway between RLG and AMICO concerning a test-bed project that will evaluate distribution and collective licensing of museum digital collections in the higher educational community. RLG/CIMI collaboration Throughout the process of developing this new service for its users RLG will be working closely with CIMI, the Consortium for the Interchange of Museum Information (www.cimi.org/). CIMI's mission is to bring an open standards-based approach to the management and delivery of museum information. RLG is a founding member of CIMI. For further information, contact: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Katharine Martinez Program Officer, New Digital Services : Voice: 650 691 2231 Research Libraries Group, Inc. : FAX: 650 964 0943 1200 Villa Street : Web: http://www.rlg.org Mountain View, CA 94041-1100 USA : E-mail: [email protected] * * For long or MIME e-mail use [email protected] ----------------------------------------------------------------- To: [email protected]
