Dear AMICOs,

At the Visual Resources Association meeting last week in Los Angeles, the Research Libraries Group and the VRA Data Standards Committee held a meeting about the VRA's "VISION" Project. In this project, VRA members have been describing slides in a shared database @ RLG, and testing the data structure they have developed: "the VRA Core."

Some of the works that VRA members are describing are in the collections of AMICO members, and are or will be in the AMICO Library. Seeing these records in a similar format (RLG Is considering the same "file") raised some issues for the AMICO members present.

For example, there are 10 VISION records for a slides of the Rembrandt Polish Rider in the Frick Collection (one for each of many details). However, there will be one record for this work in the AMICO Library next year. Since these were created in different parts of the Frick, we expect they can work this out.

But, there are already 12 records in the VISION database describing works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (including three for Mark Tansey's "Innocent Eye Test"). There is a record in the AMICO Library for the J. Paul Getty Museum's Funerary Wreath (JPGM.93.AM.30) and one in the VISION database (made by the University of California Santa Cruz). I also noticed records for works in the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of American Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Art, San Francisco, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in my quick review.

Needless to say, the information about the works differed in the AMICO Library and in the VISION database.

As RLG has begun to speak about VISION and AMICO as one integrated resource, the relationship between records created by museums and those created by visual resources curators is an important one for us to address. I'd be very interested in hearing your opinions on this. If you would like to look at the VISION prototype system, please let me know, and I'll get you access.

Best,

jennifer