Cross
Currents No 2 June 2001
A
digest of cross sectoral information management events, issues and ideas in
organisations, libraries, archives and museums, with special emphasis on
arts and the humanities.
ARTS
& HUMANITIES
The
Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network (SCRAN) and the Arts Museum Image
Consortium (AMICO) have formed a partnership to distribute the AMICO Library.
SCRAN plans to add the AMICO Library to the existing SCRAN services, available
to primary and secondary schools throughout the United Kingdom, from September
2001 and may also distribute to higher educational institutions and public
libraries in the U.K. AMICO and SCRAN will share specifications and tools,
explore issues of cross-resource access and look to make SCRAN resources
available in North America to educational subscribers.
SCRAN
was founded by a partnership of the National Museums of Scotland, Scottish Museums Council
and the Royal Commission on the Ancient &
Historical Monuments of Scotland and now includes representatives of
the British Computer Society, the Conference of Scottish Higher
Education Principals and the Learning and Teaching Scotland. It is available at a wide range of community information points,
including schools, libraries, museums, community centres and tourist
information centres. A central co-ordinating body signs a licence agreement
form and SCRAN provides a site licence, password and username for each
participating institution. Personal licences are also available for home use.
SCRAN contains 700,000 text records of historic monuments and artefacts
held in Scottish museums, galleries and archives and 120,000 related
multimedia resources. In addition, it has commissioned 70 multimedia essays,
based on these resources, for educational use.
AMICO
aims to share, shape and standardise digital information in museum collections
and enable its educational use. It is an independent non-profit corporation with a membership of over 30 major museums in the United
States and Canada. AMICO members
make annual contributions of multimedia documentation of works in their museum
collections. This is regularly compiled and made available to universities,
colleges, schools, and public libraries. The AMICO Library is accessible over
secure networks to institutional subscribers including universities, colleges,
libraries, schools, and museums and is now licensed to over 2 million users,
including faculty, students, teachers, staff, and researchers. Educational
institutions may subscribe to the AMICO Library by contacting one of its
distributors. These include the Research
Libraries Group and the Ohio Library and Information Network,
and now SCRAN. A subscription to the AMICO Library provides a license to use
works for a broad range of educational purposes. Websites: http://www.amico.org
Web: http://www.scran.ac.uk [Source: NINCH-Announce]
The
6th biennial International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management will be
held at the Queensland University of Technology 1-4 July 2001. Aimed at
arts managers, researchers, academics and consultants in Canada, US, UK, Europe, Singapore, China, Japan, New Zealand and
Australia, topics include: the
media industry[ new technologies and the arts; promotion of heritage
destinations; marketing for visual art museums and galleries; case studies of
individual arts and cultural organisations. Website:
http://www.aimac.bus.qut.edu.au
[Source: Regional Galleries
Association of Queensland]
The
following research initiatives and projects are incorporated in an inventory
on the Center for Arts and Culture website: http://www.culturalpolicy.org
Administration
of Public Art at State Universities. - American Art Museums and their Use of the
Web. - Art Journalism in
Marketplace; Artists Training and Career Project. - Arts and Culture Indicators
in Community Building. - Arts Management Research Clearinghouse. - Arts
Opportunities for Young People in Chicago. - Arts Performance Index (on the
health, status and impact of the nonprofit arts industry).
Blockbuster
Exhibitions. - Boston Indicators of Progress, Change and Sustainability. - Career
Tracking in the Arts. - Collaborations between Choreographers and Musicians. -
Community Impact - the Role of Smaller Arts Organizations in New York State. -
Community Indicators Project. - Community Partnerships for Cultural
Participation: Status, Trends and Prospects. - Creative Classrooms Project. - The
Creative Community - Leveraging Creativity and
Culture for Silicon Valley's Economic and Civic Future. -
Cultural Indicators for New York City. - Cultural Information Online. -
Cultural Policy Inventory.
Directory
of Artist Population Studies. - Freedom of Expression in Art and Culture;
Funding Trends and Analysis. - The Future of Philanthropy and
the Nonprofit Sector in a Changing America. - Integrated Assessment of
Policy-Relevant Research and Data on the Arts. - International Issues in
Cultural Management Training.
Mapping
Associational Infrastructure of the Arts and Cultural Sector. - Measuring
Aesthetic Experience. - Measuring the Health of our Common Culture. - Measuring
the Impact of a Community-Based Music Commissioning Project. - Meetings Analysis
and Planning. - Methodologies for Data Collection on Artists and Arts
Organizations. - MoMA's Visual Thinking Curriculum; Museum and Multicultural
Awareness. - National Arts Policy Clearinghouse; National Arts Journalism
Program. - National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support. - National Economic
Impact Study (updating Americans for the Art's first national economic impact
study done in 1994).
Participation
Project: Artists; Communities and Cultural Citizenship. - Patterns of Cultural
Contention. - Partnering Dance and Education. - Planning Grant for Better Business
Practices. - The Politics of Performing Arts Centres. - Public Art Service
Study. -
Public Attitudes toward Artists. - Reinventing Downtown: Sports, Culture,
Conventions and the New American City. - The Social, Political and Cultural
Impact of New Technologies: Insights from Surveys on Contemporary Patterns of
Internet Users. - Social Impact of the Arts Project; Social Impact of the
Informal Arts in Chicago Communities. - Social Indicators and the Nation's
Social Health. - Stimulating Capital to the Cultural Sector Support System for
American Artists.
Technical
Assistance Needs Assessment and Inventory. - Technology and Intellectual
Property. - Technology Needs Assessment. - Teaching Cultural Policy; The
Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge. - Trends in Arts
Participation. - The Two Ravens
Project: Digital Society and the Humanities. - Unified Database of Arts
Organizations. - Working Group on Creativity in the Digital Age.
CHN
brings
together resources to assist California history and humanities projects. It
includes a list of scholars, writers and culture bearers that are available
for assistance to groups planning programs, grant
opportunities, case studies, news and links. Website: http://www.thinkcalifornia.net/ [Source: Librarians Internet Index]
Cultivate-list
is a new discussion list established by the European Cultural Heritage Network
as part of the European Union's Cultural Heritage
& Information Technologies Program, which continues the work of the National Focal Points under the Telematics for Libraries
Program.
CULTIVATE is expanding this program to include all memory institutions - namely museums, archives and libraries - and the e-list is
open to anyone in the cultural heritage sector interested in the information
society technologies, the Commission's initiatives and programs. To join
cultivate-list, send an email to: majordomo@ukoln.ac.uk with the following
text in the body of the message: subscribe cultivate-list [your email
address]. Website: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/home.html
[Source NINCH-Announce]
The
Research Libraries Group has initiated an international Cultural Materials
Alliance with the aim of establishing a single virtual database with one
search interface for hundreds of collections from many different institutions.
The current group of 200 members includes the American Antiquarian Society,
Brooklyn Museum of Art, International Institute of Social History, Library of
Congress, London School of Economics, National Library of Australia, New York
State Archives and Records Administration, Smithsonian Institute, University
of Oxford and Yale University. According to Joseph Busch, president of the
American Society of Information Science and Technology, “the initiative
takes advantage of existing archival and museum documentation in whatever form
they exist - whether well-formed EAD SGML finding aids or simple, word
processed files - without diminishing the granular structure.” .[Source: RLG
News]
New
York University will host the Joint International Conference of the
Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary
and Linguistic Computing in Greenwich Village, June 13-16, 2001.
The conference is touted as the oldest established meeting of scholars
working at the intersection of advanced information technologies and the
humanities. The theme for the conference is "Digital Media and
Humanities Research", and it will feature plenary addresses by two
leading scholars: Johanna Drucker, Robertson Professor in Media Studies at the
University of Virginia, and Alan Liu, Professor of English at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. Details: http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities/ach_allc2001
[Source:
NINCH-Announce]
The
Bate Collection of Musical Instruments database and the Pitt Rivers Museum
Musical Instruments database are now available on the Performing Arts Data
Service website at http://www.pads.ahds.ac.uk/batemain.html.
The Bate collection of European orchestral and woodwind instruments at the
University of Oxford was established in 1963. The Pitt Rivers Museum was
founded in 1884 when Lt.-General Pitt Rivers, an influential figure in the
development of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology, gave his collection
to the University. The Museum now has over half a million objects from all
parts of the world. The extensive photographic and sound archives also contain
early records of great importance.
An
International Critics Symposium will be held at Brisbane Powerhouse,
Queensland, 25-28 July 2001, aiming to bring together key music reviewers,
arts journalists, and artists from the USA, Europe, Asia, Britain and
Australia to engage in a debate about the role an influence of today’s arts
commentators. Website: http://www.qbfm.com.au
The
2001 annual conference of the International Federation of Theatre Research
will be held in conjunction with the Australasian Drama Studies Association
Conference at the School of Theatre, Film and Dance, University of NSW 9-14
July 2001. Under the theme trans-actions: culture and performance, topics
include performance/audience interaction; intercultural, multi-cultural and
post-colonial performance; cross-gender performance; adaptation and
translation - from culture to culture, medium to medium, period to period,
text to performance; new directions in theatre - minor theatres, future
theatres, dance theatre, theatre at the edge; between technology and
performance - screen and body, light, sound and cybernetics, musical
performance in the digital age; para-theatrical genres - street performance,
community theatre, invisible theatre, outsider theatre. Contact: Convenors,
FIRT Conference, Sydney, School of Theatre, Film and Dance, University of New
South Wales, Sydney Australia 2052, Fax: +61 2 9662 2335; Email:
thfida@unsw.edu.au Web Site: www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tfd/iftr
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This
issue of Cross Currents compiled by Paul Bentley
The
Wolanski Foundation would be grateful for feedback
on the scope, format and content of this bulletin..
