Last week I conducted our first two on-campus meetings for the AMICO Testbed and made an interesting observation. The most enthusiastic supporters of AMICO were not the art historians, they were scientists, librarians, and scholars in other fields in the humanities (e.g., philosophy, writing, history). The access to images was a major plus for them (apparently the slide library is not easy to use unless you are in the Art Department), along with subject search engines that might allow them to assemble images to go along with specific teaching topics (e.g., materials analysis, creative writing, language study, specific periods and topics in history).

This suggested to me that we might want to broaden our outreach to include some of these other academic groups.

The art historians were interested but mildly put off by the quality of the projected images. They seem to think it will be a while before AMICO replaces their primary teaching resource: the slide library.

The studio artists asked the toughest questions, mostly about copyright issues.

An asside on passwords, terms, etc., with military connotations (e.g., the Testbed Website signon):

In these days of campus PC, it is probably best to avoid any names, acronyms, etc., with military or even political connotations. A couple of years ago, our IS people made the mistake of calling a mass installation of new computers on campus "D-day." We were then treated to weeks of comment on the inappropriateness of military analogies, how this wasn't really an invasion, how it was insulting to veterans of WWII, etc., etc., etc. (yes, yes, I know, but there you are...)

Peter Walsh, Davis Museum, Wellesley College