Re: Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure
Jennifer: You're right, the fragment I forwarded did represent museums as victim rather than as active agent with much to offer in partnership. Although there was no testimony from museums reps at the New York meeting this past Saturday, there was some interest and, from the audience, some powerful remarks by Len and from CAA's Eve Sinaiko about aspects of museums' experiences especially around engagement with the public. (Len perhaps you could best represent your own comments) This prompted what appeared to be a much deeper interest on the commission to hear more substantially from members of the community - so we should perhaps offer suggestions for speakers at the next meetings: August 21st, Berkeley; September 18th, Los Angeles; October 9th, Houston; October 26th, Baltimore. Suggestions can be sent to John Unsworth at cyberch...@acls.org>. David On Jun 17, 2004, at 10:12 AM, J. Trant wrote: David and Len (and others), I also found it a bit disconcerting how little the state of the art in museum information standards and practices in the museum field was reflected in the testimony that was forwarded. Off the top of my head: In terms of standards ... The CIDOC Relational Data Model was accepted by the international museum community 10 years ago, and has since been expressed as an Object Oriented Model. The Canadian Heritage Information Network has published museum data standards (implemented in their systems used by 100s of museums with millions of records) for over 30 years. Art Museum participation ensured that the Categories for the Description of Works of Art - CDWA (prepared by the Art Information Task Force, a joint NEH-funded project of the Getty and the College Art Association, now maintained by the Getty) represented information museums managed. Cross-over between the two committees ensured they were compatible CIMI built on this work, and took it experimentally into areas of SGML and then XML, the Dublin core and Hand-held delivery (among other projects). AMICO has implemented a specification based on these standards and The AMICO Library contains 100,000+ museum records from over 25 museums that HAVE BEEN interchanged among 100s of organizations and are accommodated in dozens of information management systems. The Museums and the Online Archive of California project has also assembled a significant body of museum records from multiple institutions and made it available through multiple channels. The community is full of experience, and the problems we face are not insurmountable: The Tate has digitized its collection. At Museums and the Web the discussion was turning from 'how do we do it' to 'what do we do now we're almost done' ... In terms of innovation ... Far from being behind the curve, museums are a hot-bed of creativity. Look at the work of the Walker Art Center (Minnesota Artists http://mnartists.org), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (http://www.sfmoma.org) and The Exploratorium (http://www.exploratorium.org), Conservation Central (Smithsonian's National Zoo) http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Education/ConservationCentral, The American Museum of Natural History including the OLogy - Projects area http://ology.amnh.org. I could go on ... In terms of participation ... Far from coming to the table as supplicants, museums need to step forward as equal participants with real experience in developing significant collections of lasting scholarly value -- both digital and PHYSICAL. Moving knowledge forward digitally should not involve a severing of the relationship between the physical object and the digital surrogate. (Increased knowledge about the physical artefacts should pass into the digital realm as a matter of course, supported by institutional policy and procedure). Museums have a long history of developing knowledge based on these resources and communicating it to multiple audiences in many different modes and modalities. What we're missing is an ability to speak as a group about these experiences. This is one case where the heterogeneous nature of our interdisciplinary museum community works against us. With my best from Grindstone Island, jennifer -- __ J. Trantjtr...@archimuse.com Partner Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516 Archives Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025 158 Lee Ave, Toronto Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com __ --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: davidlgr...@sbcglobal.net To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure
David and Len (and others), I also found it a bit disconcerting how little the state of the art in museum information standards and practices in the museum field was reflected in the testimony that was forwarded. Off the top of my head: In terms of standards ... The CIDOC Relational Data Model was accepted by the international museum community 10 years ago, and has since been expressed as an Object Oriented Model. The Canadian Heritage Information Network has published museum data standards (implemented in their systems used by 100s of museums with millions of records) for over 30 years. Art Museum participation ensured that the Categories for the Description of Works of Art - CDWA (prepared by the Art Information Task Force, a joint NEH-funded project of the Getty and the College Art Association, now maintained by the Getty) represented information museums managed. Cross-over between the two committees ensured they were compatible CIMI built on this work, and took it experimentally into areas of SGML and then XML, the Dublin core and Hand-held delivery (among other projects). AMICO has implemented a specification based on these standards and The AMICO Library contains 100,000+ museum records from over 25 museums that HAVE BEEN interchanged among 100s of organizations and are accommodated in dozens of information management systems. The Museums and the Online Archive of California project has also assembled a significant body of museum records from multiple institutions and made it available through multiple channels. The community is full of experience, and the problems we face are not insurmountable: The Tate has digitized its collection. At Museums and the Web the discussion was turning from 'how do we do it' to 'what do we do now we're almost done' ... In terms of innovation ... Far from being behind the curve, museums are a hot-bed of creativity. Look at the work of the Walker Art Center (Minnesota Artists http://mnartists.org), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (http://www.sfmoma.org) and The Exploratorium (http://www.exploratorium.org), Conservation Central (Smithsonian's National Zoo) http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Education/ConservationCentral, The American Museum of Natural History including the OLogy - Projects area http://ology.amnh.org. ... I could go on ... In terms of participation ... Far from coming to the table as supplicants, museums need to step forward as equal participants with real experience in developing significant collections of lasting scholarly value -- both digital and PHYSICAL. Moving knowledge forward digitally should not involve a severing of the relationship between the physical object and the digital surrogate. (Increased knowledge about the physical artefacts should pass into the digital realm as a matter of course, supported by institutional policy and procedure). Museums have a long history of developing knowledge based on these resources and communicating it to multiple audiences in many different modes and modalities. What we're missing is an ability to speak as a group about these experiences. This is one case where the heterogeneous nature of our interdisciplinary museum community works against us. With my best from Grindstone Island, jennifer -- __ J. Trantjtr...@archimuse.com Partner Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516 Archives Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025 158 Lee Ave, Toronto Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com __ --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure
Readers might be interested in the progress of the Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm>. The Commission is a humanities response to the influential NSF Commission on Cyberinfrastructure that made recommendations for improving national cyberinfrastructure for scientific research and teaching ( See Revolutioning Science Engineering Through Cyber-infrastructure, http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/>). The ACLS has been holding a series of public meetings (so far in DC and Chicago). The next is this coming Saturday (June 19) at the NY Public Library from 10 to 4:30pm (future public meetings are scheduled for Berkeley, Los Angeles, Houston and Baltimore - see the whole list at http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber_public_sessions.htm>). The Commission doesn't seem to know quite where museums might fit into this structure and into the discussion of the infrastructure needs of the country in order to serve the public, teachers and researchers in building significant knowledge and cultural resources online. However two of the presentations in Chicago went a long way, in my opinion, in laying out the situation of museums. These presentations were by William Barnett at the Field Museum and James Grossman at the Newberry Library. Barnett's presentation was explicitly about the situation of museums (and I quote much of it below). One of the interesting points of Grossman's talk was his emphasis on broadening the audience away from research libraries to a wider public and to opening discussion around the importance of establishing regional centers for cross-sector training and the digital sharing and communication of knowledge and resources.) The notes on the Chicago meeting are not yet complete - but I recommend them to you all and I suggest that more from the museum community attend the public hearings in order to ensure the expansion of this discussion. (To ensure you get announcements of future meetings, you can join an announce-list described on the Humanities Cyberinfrastructure homepage: http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm>.) Here is part of Barnett's talk: x-tad-biggerThe current state of our cyberinfrastructure is one of great potential with little to no support. Museums contain vast and unique collections that are valuable as primary source material and as publications. The Field Museum has over 40 active social science researchers on staff. As it relates just to Humanities and Social Sciences, we steward over 600,000 objects in Anthropology, 275,000 volumes in our research library, 500,000 photographs, and 2,500 linear feet of documents in our institutional archives. As a single example, we maintain an important collection of documents and images from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition that not only gave birth to our institution, but also gave rise to 20th Century research and public awareness in Anthropology and Conservation. Our collections are just a small piece of the great and actively used trove found in Art, Historical, Natural History, Maritime, and other museums that are a primary and growing foundation of scholarly research. Yet, we must continue to generate, curate, and preserve our collections and scholarly information. Could we just unlock the content, it would change the way we undertake research and education worldwide. Initiatives such as ARTstor are first steps that show the potential of museum collections. Museums' information infrastructures have been under funded. We are second class citizens across a digital scholarly divide. Historically, museums have lagged behind in information technologies. We have frankly been slow to adopt technology infrastructures but at the same time we now find increasing expectations for it and our scholarly success and operational survival depend on it. We do not have the computer science or engineering departments present in universities and so do not have that expertise readily at hand. We desperately need to catch up in order to participate equitably. Museums were written out of the e-Rate legislation that so assisted libraries and schools. Museums were not part of the community that invested in and profited from Internet2 and [the National Science Foundation's] Digital Library Initiatives, placing us at great disadvantage in terms of the infrastructure and expertise needed to be a vital part of the scholarly community. There are currently 206 University members of Internet2 and 41 Affiliate members, of which one is a museum. The cyberinfrastructure that will allow us to cross the threshold to new scholarly knowledge environments in teaching and research is at several levels. First, all our institutions need broadband connections to the Internet and Next Generation Internets and upgrades of our internal networks as a foundation for all other activities.
Re: Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure
x-tad-biggerIt is also noteworthy, but not necessarily significant, that there are Museum leaders among the Commission members and Advisors; /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerLen: Did you mean to say that there are NO museum leaders as I can't see any on the list. I don't think one should necessarily have expected any, although it would have been prescient of them to have included one cross-over - an academic, a scholar who was active in museums (as Bill Barnett would appear to be). /x-tad-biggerCommission Members: Paul Courant Provost and Professor of Economics University of Michigan Sarah Fraser Associate Professor and Chair Art History, Northwestern University Mike Goodchild Director, Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science Professor, Geography University of California, Santa Barbara Margaret Hedstrom Associate Professor, School of Information University of Michigan Charles Henry Vice President and Chief Information Officer Rice University Peter B. Kaufman Director of Strategic Initiatives, Innodata Isogen President, Intelligent Television Jerome McGann John Stewart Bryan Professor English, University of Virginia Roy Rosenzweig Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor History, George Mason University John Unsworth (Chair) Dean and Professor Grad School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Bruce Zuckerman Professor, School of Religion Director, Archaeological Research Collection University of Southern California Advisors to the Commission: Dan Atkins Professor, School of Information Director, Alliance for Community Technology University of Michigan James Herbert Senior NSF/NEH Advisor National Science Foundation Clifford Lynch, Director Coalition for Networked Information Deanna Marcum Associate Librarian for Library Services Library of Congress Harold Short Director, Center for Computing in the Humanities King's College, London Donald J. Waters Program Officer for Scholarly Communication The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Steve Wheatley Vice-President, American Council of Learned Societies Senior Editor: Abby Smith Director of Programs Council on Library and Information Resources Washington, DC David On Jun 16, 2004, at 1:49 PM, Leonard Steinbach wrote: x-tad-biggerDavid,/x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerThank you for raising promulgating this... I was (truly) about to do so myself./x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerI will be attending the Commission meeting in New York on Saturday, but not ostensibly to testify. I am looking forward to seeing how Museums are portrayed, and as you noted, the Chicago notes are not posted yet, so your summation is most helpful./x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerIt may be (again, I was awaiting my experience on Saturday to decide my view) that both AAM and MCN should provide more formal representational testimony to the Commission, both as written documents and verbal testimony./x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerIt is also noteworthy, but not necessarily significant, that there are Museum leaders among the Commission members and Advisors; however, given the sponsorship of the Mellon foundation, it seems hardly likely that museums will be forgotten on all this./x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerI will just reiterate that the website for this project is /x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger and one can find more information there, including meeting notes, and sign up there for email notifications about its progress./x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerI am glad you have stimulated this discussion./x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerLen Steinbach/x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger-Original Message-/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerFrom:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger David Green [mailto:red...@mac.com]/x-tad-bigger x-tad-bigger /x-tad-biggerx-tad-biggerSent:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:28 AM/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerTo:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger mcn_mc...@listserver.americaneagle.com/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerSubject:/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure/x-tad-bigger Readers might be interested in the progress of the Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm>. The Commission is a humanities response to the influential NSF Commission on Cyberinfrastructure that made recommendations for improving national cyberinfrastructure for scientific research and teaching ( See Revolutioning Science Engineering Through Cyber-infrastructure, http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/>). The ACLS has been holding a series of public meetings (so far in DC and Chicago). The next is this coming Sa
Re: Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure
Yes I meant to say that there are NO Museum leaders among -Original Message- From: David Green [mailto:red...@mac.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:28 PM To: mcn_mc...@listserver.americaneagle.com Subject: Re: Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure It is also noteworthy, but not necessarily significant, that there are Museum leaders among the Commission members and Advisors; Len: Did you mean to say that there are NO museum leaders as I can't see any on the list. I don't think one should necessarily have expected any, although it would have been prescient of them to have included one cross-over - an academic, a scholar who was active in museums (as Bill Barnett would appear to be). Commission Members: Paul Courant Provost and Professor of Economics University of Michigan Sarah Fraser Associate Professor and Chair Art History, Northwestern University Mike Goodchild Director, Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science Professor, Geography University of California, Santa Barbara Margaret Hedstrom Associate Professor, School of Information University of Michigan Charles Henry Vice President and Chief Information Officer Rice University Peter B. Kaufman Director of Strategic Initiatives, Innodata Isogen President, Intelligent Television Jerome McGann John Stewart Bryan Professor English, University of Virginia Roy Rosenzweig Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor History, George Mason University John Unsworth (Chair) Dean and Professor Grad School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Bruce Zuckerman Professor, School of Religion Director, Archaeological Research Collection University of Southern California Advisors to the Commission: Dan Atkins Professor, School of Information Director, Alliance for Community Technology University of Michigan James Herbert Senior NSF/NEH Advisor National Science Foundation Clifford Lynch, Director Coalition for Networked Information Deanna Marcum Associate Librarian for Library Services Library of Congress Harold Short Director, Center for Computing in the Humanities King's College, London Donald J. Waters Program Officer for Scholarly Communication The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Steve Wheatley Vice-President, American Council of Learned Societies Senior Editor: Abby Smith Director of Programs Council on Library and Information Resources Washington, DC David On Jun 16, 2004, at 1:49 PM, Leonard Steinbach wrote: David, Thank you for raising promulgating this... I was (truly) about to do so myself. I will be attending the Commission meeting in New York on Saturday, but not ostensibly to testify. I am looking forward to seeing how Museums are portrayed, and as you noted, the Chicago notes are not posted yet, so your summation is most helpful. It may be (again, I was awaiting my experience on Saturday to decide my view) that both AAM and MCN should provide more formal representational testimony to the Commission, both as written documents and verbal testimony. It is also noteworthy, but not necessarily significant, that there are Museum leaders among the Commission members and Advisors; however, given the sponsorship of the Mellon foundation, it seems hardly likely that museums will be forgotten on all this. I will just reiterate that the website for this project is http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm and one can find more information there, including meeting notes, and sign up there for email notifications about its progress. I am glad you have stimulated this discussion. Len Steinbach -Original Message- From: David Green [mailto:red...@mac.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:28 AM To: mcn_mc...@listserver.americaneagle.com Subject: Museums and Humanities Cyberinfrastructure Readers might be interested in the progress of the Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm. The Commission is a humanities response to the influential NSF Commission on Cyberinfrastructure that made recommendations for improving national cyberinfrastructure for scientific research and teaching ( See Revolutioning Science Engineering Through Cyber-infrastructure, http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/). The ACLS has been holding a series of public meetings (so far in DC and Chicago). The next is this coming Saturday (June 19) at the NY Public Library from 10 to 4:30pm (future public meetings are scheduled for Berkeley, Los Angeles, Houston and Baltimore - see the whole list at http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber_public_sessions.htm
