----------------------------Original message---------------------------- [Please note the following correction in the VISION press release: "In the VISION (Visual Resources Sharing Information Online Network) project, 32 VRA members will use a template on the World Wide Web, based on the VRA Data Standards Committee's "Core Categories for Visual Resources, Version 2.0," to catalog photographs and slides of works of art, architecture, and other cultural heritage artifacts." Sorry for the inconvenience. Elisa Lanzi ] <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>> VISION Project for Shared Visual Resources Records --a Joint Effort of VRA and RLG with Getty Support Oberlin, Ohio, and Mountain View, Calif., November 14, 1997--The Visual Resources Association (VRA) and the Research Libraries Group (RLG) are pleased to announce a new collaboration, the VISION project. This effort is designed to bring more visual resources information online; promulgate and test the use of standards for creating and sharing such information; and evaluate the new data's value in the context of existing RLG research information databases. Support from the Getty Information Institute helps make this possible. "The VISION project should help demonstrate the rich potential for cultural heritage research in a database that combines museum object and visual resources catalog records," says Joseph Romano, president of the Visual Resources Association. "Most visual resources collections contain slides and photographs that document the physical state of museum-held objects at a specific time: a painting before or after it has been cleaned, an outdoor sculpture in its original location, and so on. VISION will place cataloging for these visual documents in the same file with cataloging for the objects themselves--with links to images on the Web." In the VISION (Visual Resources Sharing Information Online Network) project, 32 VRA members will use a template on the World Wide Web, based on the VRA Data Standards Committee's "Core Categories for Visual Resources, Version 2.0," to catalog photographs and slides of works of art, architecture, and other cultural heritage artifacts. This template will be the first implementation of the Core Categories standard. More information about the Core Categories and the VISION project is given at the VRA's Web site, at http://www.oberlin.edu/~art/vra/dsc.html. Through the template and RLG software, both developed with the aid of Getty Information Institute funding, VISION records will be converted into a data stream that parallels or complements data coming from the RLG REACH (Record Export for Art and Cultural Heritage) project. (The other REACH project participants--11 museums and 4 collection management system vendors--are contributing existing machine-readable data from heterogeneous museum collection management systems that catalog objects such as paintings, sculpture, and other museum objects. More about the RLG-Getty REACH project can be found at RLG's Web site, http://www.rlg.org/reach.html. For more about the Getty Information Institute, visit the Web site http://www.gii.getty.edu.) VISION and REACH records will both go into a new RLG union catalog for museum objects and image records, accessible through the Web. The value of this new testbed file will be enhanced by its collocation with other online art resources from RLG and the Getty Information Institute (the RLIN bibliographic union catalog, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, and such CitaDel files as the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, Bibliography of the History of Art, and SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sales Catalogs)--to which the Getty Information Institute's Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) will be added. PROJECT GOALS The VISION project has three specific goals: 1. Demonstrate the application of standards for improving access to cultural heritage information, specifically the VRA Core Categories for Visual Resources, the Union List of Artist Names, and the Art & Architecture Thesaurus. 2. Determine how much the process of providing access to visual resources can be accelerated by sharing cataloging through RLG's information management and retrieval infrastructure. 3. Test the overall usefulness of access to visual resources records within a Web-based information environment such as RLG's, which provides a robust search engine for accessing a variety of cultural heritage information. PROJECT PARTICIPATION The initial nucleus of VISION contributors, comprising both RLG members and other institutions, will create records representing a variety of subject matter (fine arts, ethnographic collections, the built environment, etc.) in several formats (slides, photo archives, digital images). There may be opportunities for additional contributors to participate in later phases of the project. In spring 1998, a VISION Evaluation Advisory Group will work closely with the VISION contributors to evaluate and analyze the results of the project. Individuals interested in participating in this evaluation are invited to contact one of the project coordinators: Elisa Lanzi Chair, VRA/Data Standards Committee Lanzi/Warren Associates phone: 802-442-1570 e-mail: [log in to unmask] VRA Web: www.vra.oberlin.edu Katharine Martinez Research Libraries Group phone: 650-691-2231 e-mail: [log in to unmask] RLG Web: www.rlg.org