AMICO Press Release
May 16, 2001
SCRAN and AMICO to Collaborate: The Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network
Agrees to Distribute The AMICO Library TM
AMICO Headquarters; Pittsburgh, PA
The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) has entered into a broad collaborative
agreement with the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network (SCRAN). The two
organizations will share knowledge and expertise in the networked delivery of
cultural heritage. SCRAN plans to add The AMICO Library to the existing SCRAN
services available to primary and secondary schools throughout the United
Kingdom beginning in the fall of 2001, and may also distribute to Further
and/or Higher Educational institutions and public libraries in the U.K. AMICO
and SCRAN will share specifications and tools, explore issues of cross-resource
access, and look to make SCRAN resources available in North America to
educational subscribers.
As AMICO’s Executive Director, Jennifer Trant, notes, “SCRAN has created a rich
array of educational materials centered on Scottish cultural heritage. We hope
that SCRAN subscribers will see The AMICO Library as a complementary addition
to those materials, allowing for connections to be made across our two
collections. We are excited to see our Members’ collections available to U.K.
primary and secondary school teachers and students. It broadens the
educational reach of the museums we represent, and integrates nicely with our
North American efforts to make The AMICO Library widely available to school
users this fall.” Bruce Royan, Executive Director of SCRAN, concurs, “The
AMICO Library will be a welcome addition to the current resources we deliver.
The diverse connections to be made between collections, educators, and students
should be a natural and vibrant outgrowth of this agreement.”
SCRAN was founded by a partnership of the National Museums of Scotland (NMS),
the Scottish Museums Council (SMC) and the Royal Commission on the Ancient &
Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). Also on the SCRAN Board are
representatives of the British Computer Society (BCS), the Conference of
Scottish Higher Education Principals (COSHEP) and the Learning and Teaching
Scotland (LT Scotland), under the Chairmanship of Lady Balfour of Burleigh.
SCRAN is available at a wide range of community information points, including
schools, libraries, museums, community centres and tourist information centers.
A central co-ordinating body signs a licence agreement form and SCRAN provides
a site licence, password and username for each participating institution. This
allows them to access and download large sized images and fully operational
video and audio files. These, together with a range of tools and CD-ROMs may
be used copyright cleared for teaching and learning. Personal licenses are
also available for home use. SCRAN is accessible via the World Wide Web and
its resources will also be available on CD-ROM and other multimedia formats as
they develop. Today, SCRAN contains 700,000 text records of historic monuments
and of artefacts held in Scottish museums, galleries and archives, plus 120,000
related multimedia resources. In addition, SCRAN will have commissioned 70
multimedia essays, based on these resources, for educational use.
The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) is an independent non-profit
corporation with 501 (c) 3 designation from the IRS. Founded in 1997 with 23
Members, the Consortium today is made up of over 30 major museums in the United
States and Canada. It’s an innovative collaboration not seen before in
museums that shares, shapes, and standardizes digital information regarding
museum collections and enables its educational use. Membership is open to any
institution with a collection of art.
AMICO Members make annual contributions of multimedia documentation of works in
their museums’ collections. This is regularly compiled and made available as
The AMICO Library to universities, colleges, schools, and public libraries.
The 2001-2002 edition of The AMICO Library documents approximately 75,000
different works of art, from prehistoric goddess figures to contemporary
installations. More than simply an image database, works in The AMICO Library
are fully documented and may also include curatorial text about the artwork,
detailed provenance information, multiple views of the work itself, and other
related multimedia. “Subscribers find The AMICO Library valuable because it
combines the immediacy and accessibility of the Web with the persistence and
academic weight of traditional library reference sources,” states Ms. Trant.
The AMICO Library is accessible over secure networks to institutional
subscribers including universities, colleges, libraries, schools, and museums,
and is now licensed to over 2 million users, including faculty, students,
teachers, staff, and researchers. Educational institutions may subscribe to
The AMICO Library by contacting one of its distributors. These include the
Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the Ohio Library and Information Network
(OhioLINK), and now SCRAN. A subscription to the AMICO Library provides a
license to use works for a broad range of educational purposes. Potential
subscribers may preview a Thumbnail Catalog of the AMICO Library and get
further information at http://www.amico.org.
Contact Information:
AMICO SCRAN
Jennifer Trant, Executive Director Prof. Bruce Royan, CEO
Art Museum Image Consortium Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network
Phone: +1 412 422 8533 Phone: +44 131 662 1211
Email: [log in to unmask] Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.amico.org Web: http://www.scran.ac.uk
-------------------------
Kelly Richmond
Communications Director
Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO)
2008 Murray Ave, Suite D
Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA
phone: +1 412 422 8533
fax: +1 412 422 8594
http://www.amico.org
[log in to unmask]
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