Dear AMICO Editors,

This message launches the activities of the AMICO Editorial Committee. You now have your own web page at http://www.members.amico.org/comm/edit.html and your own TO DO list.

The mission of the Editorial Committee is to standardize the presentation of information in the AMICO Library. Our goal is to ensure that the merged resource has an intellectual coherence, and that all the records can be retrieved consistently.

We've developed a number of tools to help analyse the data in the Library. These are available at http://206.210.85.243/amico/fulldb/ (You need an individual user name and password to get access to the editable version of the AMICO Library. please email me if you do not yet have one.)

I'd like to propose the following as a means of getting moving on this task.

1. Review the occurrence lists online for the following fields:

	* Object Type - OTY 
	* Classification Term - CLT 

	* Creator Culture/Nationality - CRC 
	* Creator Name - CRN 
	* Creator Qualifier - CRQ 

	* Measurements Dimension Unit - MDU 
	* Measurements Dimension - MED 

	* Related Image Decription - RID 

2. Decide through discussion on the list, which of these fields (or which OTHER fields) are priority access points, and focus on these first.

3. Develop a strategy for standardizing the data in each field, in priority. In some cases we may need to clarify field definitions and usage. We may decide to adopt a particular short list of terms (e.g. for Object Type - OTY), or a particular vocabulary resource. In some cases, it may just mean removing spelling and typographical errors. (This has been facilitated in the online editing tool -- you can move back and forth between occurrence lists and the records that contain those terms. You can also generate lists dynamically for records from your own collection.) Each member will be responsible for implementing the Editorial Committee's decisions in their AMICO Library Records.

4. Further develop our strategy for working with the vocabulary resources of the GII. These include the Art and Architecture Thesaurus and the Union List of Artists Names, as well as the Thesaurus of Geographic Names. We have made comparisons between the AMICO data and ULAN and AAT and the first rough reports are available online. You can find these in the "GII Matching" section of online editing tools.

As always, we are open to ideas about how best to proceed with this task. Please lpost any suggestions, questions or comments to the committee discussion list, using the URL in this message. We do need to get moving on these tasks, however, as we'd like to have some further coherence to the AMICO Library in its first broad release.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm looking forward to working on these issues with you.

jennifer