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THE J. PAUL GETTY TRUST - PRESS INFORMATION
______________________________________________
Date:         December 23, 1994
For Release:  Immediate
 
Contact:      Philippa Calnan               401 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite
900
              Director, Public Affairs      Santa Monica, CA  90401-1455
 
              Dale Kutzera                  310-395-0388  Telephone
              Public Affairs Assistant      310-395-5289  Telefax
 
     or:      Jennifer Trant                [log in to unmask]
              Manager, Imaging Initative
              Getty Art History Information Program
 
 
PILOT PROJECT TO EXPLORE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND OTHER
ISSUES RELATED TO DIGITAL IMAGES AND INFORMATION
 
 
Participating Museums and Universities Announced
 
 
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- A landmark project jointly launched by the Getty
Art History Information Program (AHIP) and MUSE Educational Media will
address key issues in the educational use of museum images and related
information delivered over computer networks.  The Museum Educational Site
Licensing Project will enable museum and educational communities to develop
common solutions to problems now inhibiting the development of
computer-based learning tools for the study of art and culture.  The pilot
project will test the distribution of art images and information from six
museums to seven universities.  Participating institutions will resolve
issues of intellectual property rights, network security, and information
standards, defining the terms and conditions for the educational use of
museum images and information on campus networks.  This collaborative
venture will also demonstrate the value of digital media in the study of
art and culture.
 
"Computer networks offer the potential to make art and cultural information
widely available to more people, changing the nature of learning and
research," said Eleanor Fink, director of AHIP. "By linking museums and
universities, the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project will act as a
laboratory for developing and testing the legal, administrative, and
technical mechanisms needed to enable the full educational use of museum
collections."
 
The Museum Educational Site Licensing Project will run from January 1, 1995
through June 30, 1997, and be jointly managed by AHIP and MUSE Educational
Media, a nonprofit organization that seeks to increase public appreciation
and exposure to museum holdings.  It will make digitized images and
descriptive texts representing at least 3,000 works of art (a minimum of
500 from each participating museum) available on the campus networks of
participating universities without site licenses or royalty fees during the
1995-96 academic year.  Information on and images of 3,000 additional works
will be added during the 1996-97 academic year.  During this time, project
participants will work in partnership to develop and test administrative,
technical, and legal mechanisms that will enable the routine delivery of
high-quality museum images and information to educational institutions.
Participants will evaluate the uses of the materials on university
campuses, define requirements and assess technological systems for network
security, and develop a model site licensing agreement.
 
"We will never achieve the `virtual museum' of the future without a common
framework of rights, permissions, and restrictions," said Karl Katz,
director of MUSE Educational Media. "The collaborative nature of the Museum
Educational Site Licensing Project will ensure that the solutions it
develops will meet the needs of both the museum and the educational
communities, bridging the gap between image users and rights holders."
 
Participating organizations will contribute staff time and technical
resources to the project.  Together they will form an interdisciplinary
team of experts in art history, instructional technology, museum
collections documentation, and academic computing, ensuring that multiple
points of view are represented.  The works of art used in the study will be
selected by the museums on the basis of criteria suggested by the
universities, who have been encouraged to propose a wide variety of
educational and research uses for the materials.  Faculty from each
university have committed to use the test images and data in at least one
course in each academic year.  Throughout the project, student use will be
monitored and evaluated by experts in educational technology, providing
concrete comparative data about the use of digital information as an
educational tool.
 
"One of the main reasons we don't have on-line classrooms in the humanities
and the arts like we do in the sciences and engineering is simply the lack
of information available in digitalform," said Thomas Hickerson, director
of the division of rare and manuscript collections at the Cornell
University Library and a project participant. "We aren't going to see the
resources devoted to developing large databases of material until we can
demonstrate their value.  The Museum Educational Site Licensing Project
will push us toward those practical uses."
 
Planning and organization of the project is being funded by the Imaging
Initiative of the Getty Art History Information Program, which will also
provide some matching funds for project implementation.  Additional funding
will be sought from public and private foundations.  The project has the
support of the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American
Association of Museums, and the Coalition for Networked Information.
 
"I consider this the first step to giving schools and libraries as well as
home users on-line access to our collections across networks," said Maxwell
L. Anderson, director of the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, Georgia,
and chair of the Association of Art Museum Directors Information Technology
Committee.  "This extraordinary project will provide much needed
information and solutions for the electronic future of America's cultural
patrimony."
 
Since its beginnings in 1983, the Getty Art History Information Program
(AHIP) has made art-historical information more available to scholars and
researchers through advanced computertechnology.  In collaboration with
domestic and international institutions and organizations, AHIP works at
several levels of policy, standards, and practice to help shape the
direction of automation in the arts and humanities.  To meet the evolving
needs of the art community, AHIP initiates and supports activities in four
major areas:  Issues and Policy, Standards and Resources, Research Database
Projects, and Technical Development and Research.  The Getty Art History
Information Program is an operating program of the J. Paul Getty Trust.
The other programs are the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center for the
History of Art and the Humanities, the Getty Conservation Institute, the
Getty Center for Education in the Arts, the Museum Management Institute,
and the Getty Grant Program.
 
#   #   #
 
PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS OF THE MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL SITE LICENSING PROJECT
 
MUSEUMS
The Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of California, Los
Angeles
The International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester
The Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
 
UNIVERSITIES
American University, Washington, D.C.
Columbia University, New York
Cornell University, Ithaca
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Maryland at College Park
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint
The University of Virginia, Charlottesville
 
 
 
J. Trant
Manager, Imaging Initiative
Getty Art History Information Program
[log in to unmask]  phone: (310) 451-6381  fax: (310) 451-5570