This is the third of the daily updates of the Cultures Connected:  Automating
Museums in the Americas and Beyond conferences, being held in Washington, D. C.
this week.  Incidentally, this is the second edition of "issue three", as the
ill-fated first edition died of unnatural causes while residing on my hard
drive.  Bill and I apologize for the delay.
 
  Tuesday (Aug 30) saw the conference-goers spread across the D. C. area.  Some
visited the Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland.  There
they learned of the processes involved in the move of the National Museum of
Natural History's ethnology and archeology collections.
  Another group went to the National Museum of American History to experience,
first hand, the automated process involved when an object becomes a part of the
national collection.
  Others toured the Smithsonian's art reference and research resources.  Their
tour included several demonstrations of a number of computer-related programs,
including the National Museum of American Art's America Online project.
  Still others explored the Library of Congress, including the Library's
Department of Prints and Photographs.
  Finally, while the Data and Terminology Working and the Data Modeling Groups
held a final meeting at the hotel, the Archeology Working Group got a tour of
the Department of the Interior's museum.
  That afternoon, everyone gathered at the Smithsonian's Ripley Center, where a
variety of events -- including software demonstrations and the traditional
T-Shirt Swap -- were held concurrently.  The demonstrations, all put on by
conference attendees, were as follows:
 
     An After Dark screen saver Slide Show of selections from the art collection
of the Federal Reserve Board. - Mary Ann Goley, USA
     Preservation of Jesuit Guarani Missions of South America. - Luiz Antonio
Bolento Custodio, IBPC, Brazil
     Documentation and Automation in Public Museums (slide presentation). -
Lina Nagel, Chile
     A Report on the Inventory of Cultural History (slides). - Marcela
Roubillard, Chile
     Electronic Art and Architecture Thesaurus - Josephine Nieuwenhuis, USA
     National Museum of Fine Arts Data Base. - Helena Dodd Ferrez, Brazil
     Remote Access to Museum Archives: RAMA Consortium - Dominique Delouis,
France, and John Paraschos, Greece
     National Archaeological Data Base and Mosaic. - Veletta Canouts, National
Park Service & Jim Farley, University of Arkansas ([log in to unmask]), USA
     Cultural Documentation and Information System, CLIO. - Martin Doerr, Spyros
Michailidis and Ifigenia Dionissiado, Institute of Computer Science and Benaki
Museum, Greece (unfortunately, due to a mishap, the CLIO demonstration was not
fully functional)
     MOSAIC Interface to a Museum Database.- Dan Kurys, Mitre Corporation, USA
     Cultural Events and Heritage Objects Data Base. - Daniela Daneliuc, Romania
     Archival Image Digital Database. - Florence Schwein and Scott Cutler,
Centennial Museum, and Mike Kolitsky, Univ. of Texas at El Paso USA
     Image and Textual Data Base of Croatian Drawings, - Mikica Mastrovic,
Croatia
     Brancusi Project: Interactive Multimedia. - Jeremy Rees, International
Visual Arts Information Network, UK
     The Archaeology of Euesperides: Hypercard Museum Exhibit. - Maria Economou,
Linacre College, UK
     Image Database for Art and Architecture. - Carmen Rioseco, University of
Catolica, Chile
     Cultural Systems for Mexico and Latin America. - Jose Amozurrutia, Mexico
     Wright Morris: Origins of a Species and American Visions: 20th-Century Art
from Roy R. Neuberger Collection. - Peter Samis, San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art, USA
     Object Oriented Multimedia Database Management System for Documentation
Purposes. - Jernet Hudolin, Martjaz Pozlep, Slovenia
     Multimedia Art Museum. - Anelisa Pacheco, Republic Museum of Rio, Brazil
     National Finnish Art Register. - Sirkka Valanto, Central Art Archives,
Finland
     Moscow Kremlin Museum Computerization. - Alexander Drenaylov, Kremlin State
Museums, Russia
     Computerization in Russian Museums. - Lev Noll, Moscow, Russia
 
  In the evening the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum graciously hosted the
closing plenary session of the CIDOC conference.  The museum's Director of
Technical Services, Arnold Kramer, offered a few moments of his time to answer
any questions conference-goers had about the exhibit.
  The first speaker was Omar Bwana, who was standing in for Mohamed Isahakia of
the National Museums of Kenya.  He reported on the progress of the AFRICOM
project, expressing his pleasure with the results of the efforts towards
automating museums throughout Africa.  In his concluding remarks, he extended an
early welcome to all who would be attending the CIDOC confernece to be held in
1996 in Nairobi.
  Then Dominique Piot-Morin, Ministere de la Culture Francaise, delivered a
speach that was well-received by the attendees.  (OUR APOLOGIES:  neither Bill
nor I are sufficiently fluent in French to have followed her speech in detail
and thus, regretably, cannot fully report on it.)
  The last speaker, Andrew Roberts, ICOM-CIDOC chair, displayed slides from
Kenya and proclaimed AFRICOM's "self help" approach a success.  He pointed out
that a similar approach would work as well for museums in Latin America, and
finished by emphaticly entreating all CIDOC members who could to attend the
upcoming conference in Nairobi.
  Following the plenary session, CIDOC held a meeting of the board at which the
Work Group chairs each gave a final report.  Before adjourning, the dates and
places of the next four conferences (Stavanger, Norway in 95; Nairobit, Kenya in
96, Nuremburg; Germany in 97; and Melbourne, Australia in 98) were announced.
 
Although the CIDOC portion of this week's conferences has essentially ended, the
MCN conference is still to come, so keep looking for more of these updates.