AMICO Users & Uses Committee

Visual Resources Association Focus Group
February 13, 1999

Summary of Questionnaires

Based on eight completed questionnaires:

The VRA participants had a fairly high degree of familiarity with the AMICO database. Most had used it extensively and some had developed AMICO applications. RLG Application

The overall appearance and functionality of the RLG application was rated very highly by these participants. A few exceptions, or observations of note, were:

• the new image frames should be correctly sized and perhaps have a fixed location
• the pick lists as implemented might not scale well
• image only views needed at least a creator, and perhaps a creator/title caption
• there might be one too many sizes of images (full screen?)
• saving the notebook will be a good innovation

Priorities for Authority Files

AMICO were overwhelmingly to link/or incorporate, AAT/ULAN. Abstracting and indexing services ranked second, but considerably below AAT/ULAN. All other secondary and tertiary targets, including textbooks, encyclopedias, and journals, ranked lower than primary sources from archives or museums. Delivery Options

Generally existing AMICO delivery strategies were endorsed. VRA participants favored separate media files rather than authored multimedia; 1024x768 lower boundaries for images, with black and white only for items which are b/w in their originals. However, they were happy to accept watermarks on higher resolution images. In generally they felt that cataloging in the language of the repository should be accompanied by indexes in English. Rights

VRA participants were uniformly willing to accept item-level rights limitations; only two felt we should continue to exclude everything that did not have full rights. Only one participant was willing to accept text without images. While they felt that links to rights holders, and perhaps to agreements, were desirable they were not interested in paying for them. On the other hand, they felt that an AMICO Library with substantial contemporary art content was worth 10-20% extra. Users and Uses

VRA participants did not think any new categories of users were necessary. They agreed that downloading, classroom projection, research and course web site mounting uses were essential and showed considerable willingness to give up overlay, manipulation and incorporation into new works.

On the other hand, they strongly felt that retaining access after the license was important and were willing to pay an average of $10 per image for that right. They accepted all other prohibitions on use that are currently in place. Reporting

Surprisingly those who responded were willing to report on modification as a condition of receiving rights to modify. Location of Use

Interestingly, VRA curators agreed that heaviest use would take place in libraries, with home as second. Visual Resources Collections, classroom, and offices ranked third. Linkage with other resources

VRA curators raked links to local slide holdings as most important, followed by course web sites. They overwhelmingly ranked ULAN "interoperability" highest in the metadata links, with AAT a distant second and MARC, VRA core and DC as "also rans". Documentation

VRA curators believed almost uniformly that exhibition history was the most important new content to add to AMICO. Scholarly essays came second.

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Last modified on  October 10, 2001