The author apologises for any cross- or duplicate posting of this message.

We are currently working on user study and evaluation of the University of
Toronto AMICO  (Art Museum Image Consortium) Testbed.  If you're not
familiar with it, AMICO is a consortium of art collecting institutions that
are working together to make their collections and collections information
available via the Web for educational purposes.  A testbed version of the
AMICO digital library of art images (about 20,000 in number) has been site
licensed to 20 university campuses for the 1997-98 academic year.  Site
licensing is AMICO's solution to some of the rights and distribution issues
that have been discussed on Museum-L in this thread, and that are inherent
in making large numbers of museum images available via the Web.  The terms
of the site license allow designated users (staff, faculty, students) in the
University of Toronto community fairly unrestricted use of the images in the
AMICO library for educational purposes for the duration of the license.
Additional information about AMICO, including the text of the licensing
agreement, is available at www.amico.net/.

Each testbed institution is conducting evaluation to determine how the AMICO
library is used, by whom, and how it might be augmented for identified
groups of users.  The use of the AMICO library is limited to designated
users at the University of Toronto, so this makes the process of identifying
and interacting with potential users a bit easier for us that it might be
for publicly accessible  web-based applications. Very briefly, we intend to
use focus groups, participant observation, administered to various
identified user groups, such as Fine Art faculty or students in a specific
course, and an online questionnaire available to all AMICO library users.
Our intention is to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative
methodologies in order to identify issues for a broad group of users, and to
gain a focused, in-depth sense of the ways in which a smaller number of
individuals interact with the AMICO library.  We're midway through the
project, and I'd be happy to share details, and results when they are
available, with interested individuals.

We'd like to hear about any formal or informal evaluation that others are
conducting and/or planning around current web-based projects, both
collections databases and other types.  We would be particularly interested
in hearing from Robert Handy and the Texas History Internet Consortium, and
from those who have conducted front-end or formative evaluation.

Cheers,

Kelly Wilhelm
Project Manager,
University of Toronto AMICO Testbed
[log in to unmask]

Dr. Lynne Teather
Associate Professor, University of Toronto Museum Studies Program, and
Project Principal, University of Toronto AMICO Testbed