AMICO Executive Committee

Art Museum Information Consortium (AMICO)
Archives & Museum Informatics:
Activities Report
June 1999

Summary

AMICO held its first annual membership meeting July 4-5, preceded by a mini-conference of the University Testbed participants (July 3-4) reporting on their uses of The AMICO Library. Following up on tasks identified at the Members meeting, AMICO prepared and submitted a proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities for grant funded development of Guidelines for Application of Art Documentation Standards and applied the recommendations of the AMICO Editorial Committee to The AMICO Library, cleaning up Object-Type terminology, Creator-Culture and Creator-Names.

Data was prepared for Ohio-Link and final data submissions for 19990 were made to RLG.

The AMICO Public Web site was re-launched with improved information clustering and updated content.

Detailed Reports:

Annual Membership Meeting and University Testbed Meeting

Reports from the University testbed participants were extremely exciting, and gave AMICO members a considerable amount of information on which to act - a report was prepared for the AMICO web site http://www.amico.org/projects/u.mtg.99/u.results.html and a pdf file was made available as well. The Members meeting was similarly reported. Please visit the following link for all the details, AMICO Members Meeting Report.

Each member Working Group developed detailed priority lists for itself and has begun working on them. Organizationally, the working groups became more formal through electing chairs to ensure that their work will be conducted.

Distributors

AMICO Technical Director Brad Dietrich delivered the last of the 1999 Library data to the Research Libraries Group and prepared for tape shipment to OhioLink. In the process, all image file headers were written with AMICO copyright and identification information.

Fundraising

The interest of members, as expressed at the AMICO members meeting, in guidelines for best practices for documentation led Jennifer Trant and David Bearman to develop a proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access program under which AMICO would lead a profession-wide effort to define guidelines for application of art documentation standards. The proposal was submitted for a June 30 deadline. It will be reviewed by NEH and, if funded, would begin in May 2000.

Rights

Following on AMICO's agreement with the Artist Rights Society, all ARS represented artists in The AMICO Library were identified in a newly created artists biographical authority file. Works by these artists dating after 1929 which were contributed by members to The AMICO Library (and hence potentially under copyright and represented by ARS) were identified. Lists were prepared for members review of the copyright status of these works prior to AMICO reporting to ARS. "Represented by ARS" copyright

Marketing/PR for AMICO and The AMICO Library

AMICO intern Kelly Richmond began to provide AMICO with an uplift to its public face in June. She worked with Executive Director Jennifer Trant on updating and rationalizing the public web site for a re-launch at the end of the month. She also prepared reports from the University Testbed meeting and members meeting, issued press releases with AMICO members on the availability of the new Library, and drafted a series of planned AMICO brochures.

Last modified on  January 11, 2002