ART MUSEUM IMAGE CONSORTIUM (AMICO) DOCUMENTS AVAILABLE

Please excuse any duplication ...

       The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) is founding the Art Museum
       Image Consortium (AMICO). The members of this new not-for-profit
       organization will build a shared library of digital documentation of
their
       collections for licensing and distribution to the educational community.

       A formal invitation to form the Consortium was issued by Hugh Davies,
       President of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) on August 7,
       1997. Founding Members of AMICO are invited to attend the Consortium's
       inaugural meeting, September 22-23, 1997 at the Art Institute of Chicago.
       The founding of AMICO follows a number of planning meetings, where
over 70
       representatives from art museums in the United States and Canada
defined the
       terms of their collaboration. Together these museums will build a shared
       library of digital documentation of their collections for licensing and
       distribution to the educational community. AMICO will build a collective
       Library, comprised of multimedia works (at least text and image)
       documenting the collections of its member museums. Products derived from
       that Library, which may or may not include value-added indexing and
       retrieval tools, will be offered to different markets under specific
licenses
       and through a number of distribution channels

       A set of agreements reflecting this consensus were drafted by Archives &
       Museum Informatics, who acted as consultants and facilitators
throughout the
       AMICO planning process. These include frameworks for organizing the
       Consortium, governing its strategic planning, developing a
standards-based
       approach to the distribution of the AMICO Library, and defining its
products
       and licenses. Key among these are the draft University and Museum
licenses,
       that outline the terms under which the library will be offered to these
       communities. Next on the licensing agenda is the drafting of K-12
educational
       and public library licenses, as the museums involved have active
educational
       programs that are already reaching these communities. This work will
       continue in tandem with plans for a testbed distribution of a significant
       Library of digital documentation to a limited number of universities
in the
       Fall of 1998.

       AMICO's framework documents are now available for public comment at
       http://www.amn.org/AMICO


       Questions regarding AMICO can be directed to:

       Maxwell Anderson
       Liaison for Information Technology
       Association of Art Museum Directors
       [log in to unmask]

       or

       Jennifer Trant or David Bearman
       Archives & Museum Informatics
       [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]

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J. Trant                             [log in to unmask]
Partner and Principal Consultant     www.archimuse.com
Archives & Museums Informatics
5501 Walnut St., Suite 203           ph. + 1-412-683-9775
Pittsburgh, PA USA 15232             fax + 1-412-683-7366
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