Robbin:
On the curatorial level, as opposed to the artists' level, there is
actually some serious creative work going on between museums and
programmers. Not so much hissing and rolling of eyes, though maybe
some gnashing of teeth. The Garden has been working with programmers
of various sorts for half a dozen years now on three projects:
1) A living collections database, an expansion/revision/implementation
of an existing vertical market Revelation database called BG-Base. For
that, we have had a programmer/systems person on staff. She's been
incredibly thorough and productive working with the horticulture
staff, and we are now putting in data and tying it to a mapping
program based upon Auto-Cad (I think I have those details correct.)
2) The implementation of a on line computer catalog for our 1.2
million item library (which is accessible on telnet now, its at
librisc.nybg.org). That required heavy involvement of Library staff
and the almost full-time participation of an information services
specialist/librarian named Bernadette Callery, who is now back
in school at Carnegie Mellon in library information technology. The
most important part of this process was a 30 year program of
systematizing the Garden's manual catalog. Thirty years!
3) The design and two-stage implementation of a database for our
herbarium, or collection of dried plants-- Almost 6 million items. We
have extensively modified a PC-based database with the original
programmer (Revelation again!), and are spec-ing out a
4gl/unix-ish/client-server database which should take 2 years to
implement. This will incorporate images, and be designed to be
authoritative (incorporating lots of authority files), accessible over
the Internet, and we hope it will be useful for other
botanical and natural science collections as a model (though there
are, of course, several other major projects with similar goals going
on throughout the country and world). There are two computer
services staff people spending most of their time on this, and a
committee of scientists who are intensively involved. We will be
hiring, the last I heard, a programmer next year.
So, there are *many* contexts where the computer/museum interface
works well. It takes a serious organizational commitment to the
process, of course, alot of fundraising. Though contract programmers
and developers would probably say that we are not typical corporate
clients, we have more in common with corporate users than with artists
who are trying to find satisfying and compelling ways to use
computers.
Hope all goes well with you as the Chinook descends on the City.
PS-- I gave your name to Charlayne Haynes from the New Museum on
B'way, they are looking to start up with Internet in and out.
Eric Siegel
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