Dear AMICO Testbed Participants,

There have been two recent press items about the University of Alberta's use of the AMICO Testbed Library.

An Article in Folio, the campus newspaper, available at http://www.ualberta.ca/FOLIO/9899/11.27/09.html

And the following interview, that was broadcast this morning on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Arts Report.

If any other campuses have articles or feedback about the AaMICO Library use, we'd be delighted to receive copies and will link them into the AMICO web pages.

All the best for the holidays,

jennifer

From the Arts Report, the daily cultural magazine program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio stations:

December 22, 1998

"Students now have access to AMICO database"

Michael Crabbe: (host) Art students at the University of Alberta now have access to North Americaās largest virtual art gallery. It's called the AMICO Database. It contains artworks from some of the most prominent galleries and museums in North America. The U of A is one of two Canadian universities testing out the database in its trial year. In Edmonton, Jennifer Keene has more.

Jennifer Keene (reporter) When professor Colleen Skidmore logs onto the AMICO Database, she can call up the images of 20,000 artworks. Theyāre culled from museums such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Metropolitan Museum and the Art institute of Chicago. Skidmore is using these images to teach a class in Canadian art history at the University of Alberta. So instead of cracking the books, her students are logging on and Skidmore says its bringing her classroom up to date.

Colleen Skidmore (professor) the standard art history textbooks for Canadian subject matter have been textbooks that are focused on painting for the most part, and havenāt been updated in the last 10 years, though the discipline of art history has changed tremendously in the last 15 years.

Keene: one of the ways that the discipline ahs changed is to place a greater emphasis on interactive learning. Colleen Skidmore says thatās something the database encourages. Students donāt just look at the pictures, they can zoom in and out to get a closer look. They can place images side by side to make comparisons.

Skidmore: Itās wonderful. The students are a lot more engaged with the work. Now as a good example, we have tow students sit at each monitor. They have to talk to each other. Itās a way of increasing the interaction both with the material and itās so · as you can see looking at it · visually the quality is so high that they become enthusiastic just looking at it.

Keene: Colleen Skidmore says the technology was a hit with students in the first semester. She says their attendance was better, and most importantly, they took away a greater understanding of Canadian art history. For the Arts Report, Iām Jennifer Keene in Edmonton.