----------------------------Original message---------------------------- ART MUSEUM IMAGE CONSORITUM (AMICO) UNIVERSITY TESTBED MEETING REPORT AVAILABLE The report of the AMICO University Testbed Project, is now available on the AMICO web site at http://www.amico.org. A narrative report summarizes the University Testbed Meeting, held at Carnegie Mellon University in June. The web site also includes many of the presentations made by participants at that meeting which brought together the producers and users of the AMICO Library. For your convenience, the Executive Summary and outline of Lessons Learned are reproduced below. Best wishes, jennifer J. Trant, AMICO Executive Director. ================================ AMICO University Testbed Meeting June 3-4, 1999 ================================ Executive Summary The Art Museum Image Consortium was formed in October 1997 after six months of planning by the staff of its twenty-three founding member museums. In the same month, AMICO issued a call-for-proposals from Universities interested in becoming test sites for research on the prototype AMICO Library which was scheduled to be available for the 1998-99 academic year. In January, 1998, the AMICO Board, acting on recommendations from its Users and Uses Committee, accepted research proposals from 16 universities to take part in the "AMICO University Testbed". The University Testbed AMICO Library when released in July 1998 consisted of documentation for almost 20,000 works of art. University Testbed participants each made different kinds of uses of the AMICO Testbed Library, and conducted different types of research on its uses. In the spring of 1999, they were invited to propose papers on their experiences for a research conference capping the testbed year. Papers were accepted from eight Testbed Universities, and combined with a paper from AMICO on its data processing, one from members on their methods, one from AMICO's testbed Library distributor, the Research Libraries Group, and one from a research team at Cornell University which had been hired by AMICO to conduct an independent analysis of Library use. The conference program was announced to coincide with the day before, and first day of, the AMICO members meetings so as to encourage AMICO members to attend the meeting in order to help shape the agenda for AMICO in 1999 and beyond. Papers were delivered in six sessions over two days. The first day was designed to give everyone a common sense of what had occurred in the Testbed year on campus, online, and in the trenches where the AMICO Library was made and delivered. In the first session, on Teaching with the AMICO Testbed Library, Michael May (University of Alberta) and Jeffrey Howe and Marc O'Connor (Boston College) illustrated two highly successful uses of relatively small selected subsets of the AMICO Library in art history (Canadian art) and general humanities (honors seminar) teaching by highly motivated instructors. In the second session on Who Uses the AMICO Library, researchers at CMU, Cornell University and AMICO reported on qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys and focus groups that sought to find out why users were using the Library and what they hoped to achieve. In the third session, museum participants in AMICO reported on how they created their AMICO contributed data, AMICO staff discussed the processing steps, and Arnold Arcolio of the Research Libraries Group discussed the RLG delivery system. The second day began with a session on how Rochester Institute of Technology, Washington University, Western Michigan University and the University of Toronto encouraged faculty use of AMICO. The strategies were different but the underlying problem was the same - faculty needed considerable hands on help and even examples of uses, in order to participate. In the fifth session, other uses beyond the classroom were discussed. Eelco Bruinsma reported on the widespread effect of AMICO on imaging and print work at the University of Leiden. Tammy Sopinski reported on plans to integrate the AMICO Library into museum education in the state of Minnesota. And June Ward reported on a project to exploit the AMICO Library in K-12 education in greater Indianapolis. The day ended with an open discussion of lessons learned and suggestions to AMICO members about ways to strengthen the Library and its delivery. The Presentation Slides used by many of the speakers can be found on the AMICO Web site, linked to the formal meeting program. See http://www.amico.org This summary highlights the issues dicussed and themes explored. ========================================= Lessons from the AMICO University Testbed ========================================= Teaching * Interest in/uses for digital art images is strong beyond art history * Focused study, using AMICO in assignments or projects is most effective * Adequate local technological infrastructure is essential * Publicity and administrative buy-in assist in AMICO adoption * Technological training for faculty overcomes resistance to use * When used, teacher and student response is positive - they want more. User Studies * AMICO adoption is slow within the University community as a whole * Enthusiastic individuals made use of AMICO in many disciplines * Users find it useful, like the functionality and information * Art professionals want to integrate AMICO/content from other sources * Non-art professionals more likely to use AMICO in classroom Organizational Structure * Cross-functional teams aid in establishing AMICO in a university * Librarians, faculty from many departments, administration, technical resources contribute to successful instructional use * To insure success institution administrations need to: - make a commitment to curriculum that uses resources like AMICO - recognize faculty who invest in innovative teaching (esp. tenure) - provide time and training to faculty Training * Step by step training is essential for faculty adoption * Documentation is important for self-tutoring and referral * Students benefit from hands-on workshops and search criteria advice * Need to tailor training to user needs AMICO MEMBERS Perspectives * AMICO members are still learning about effective multimedia documentation of art * AMICO members working to establish "best practices" to improve data * Members want to incorporate AMICO into day-to-day processes * K-12 curriculum development with AMICO is an exciting opportunity * Opening up potential users of AMICO to a really wide population * Different set of teacher and student requirements in the K-12 sector * IUPUI project will look to set "best practices" for K-12 use of this digital image resource =============== CALL FOR PAPERS =============== The AMICO University Testbed: Reflections, Results and Recommendations A Special Issue of Archives and Museum Informatics: the cultural heritage informatics quarterly. In the 1998/1999 academic year a select group of university campuses had beta access to the AMICO Library, a collection of museum multimedia documenting the collections of 23 AMICO member institutions. Selected based on a competitive call for proposals participating campuses pursued research into the ways in which the AMICO Library could be used, and the issues and opportunities presented by such a collection. Papers that report on the experience of the AMICO University Testbed are invited from both AMICO Members and Testbed participants. We are particularly interested in explorations of issues involved in the creation of the AMICO Library, reflections on the its delivery and reports on patterns of adoption. Papers that explore effective models for integrating museum multimedia into teaching and research at colleges and universities are welcome, as are more forward-thinking reflections of methods to encourage dialogue between museums and the users of museum multimedia documentation. Selected papers will be published in Archives and Museum Informatics, the cultural heritage informatics quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal from Kluwer Academic Publishers. See http://www.kap.nl Deadline for Submission: July 31, 1999. Questions or Comments: Email Jennifer Trant, Executive Director, AMICO, [log in to unmask] Guidelines for Authors can be found at http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/armu.guide.html ________ J. Trant 2008 Murray Ave, Suite D Executive Director Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA Art Museum Image Consortium http://www.amico.org Phone: +1 412 422 8533 [log in to unmask] Fax: +1 412 422 8594 ________ ________ J. Trant 2008 Murray Ave, Suite D Executive Director Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA Art Museum Image Consortium http://www.amico.org Phone: +1 412 422 8533 [log in to unmask] Fax: +1 412 422 8594 ________