AMICO Annual Members Meeting 2001
Final ReportGeneral Presentation Commentary
Introductions
The AMICO Annual Meeting began with introductions by member attendees and AMICO staff. New members and first-time attendees were welcomed by Jennifer Trant AMICO's Executive Director. A review of the meeting agenda followed, so everyone understood the flow of the next few days' activities.Overview of Activities
AMICO staff presented a summary of AMICO's activities over the past year and highlighted some future efforts. The topics covered were:
AMICO Achievements 2000-2001
Member Update
Subscriber Update
Distributor Update and Planned Coverage
Budget Overview
Editorial Highlights
Web Site Redesigns
Committee AgendasThe corresponding powerpoint presentation is available here as a .PDF file.
AMICO gains its strength from the number and diversity of its members. Members set AMICO's agenda, participate in Working Committees and make contributions to The AMICO Library. We currently have 31 members.
New Members
AMICO membership grew by three members in the second half of 2000 with the Clark Art Institute in July and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and The Walters Art Museum in September. While all three of these institutions are rich additions to the AMICO membership, membership has remained rather flat in the past year. We had set a goal of three new Members a quarter, that we did not meet.
Withdrawn Members
AMICO lost two new members last year: the Museum of the Americas Foundation, a new organization which was still defining its goals, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, a museum with pressing legal concerns. Neither of these institutions had contributed works so this did not adversely affect The AMICO Library.
The San Jose Museum of Art has also withdrawn from AMICO Membership. They are the first founding member to decide not to continue to participate.
Membership Recruitment
AMICO exhibits regularly, at the American Association of Museums Annual Meeting to maintain our profile in the museum community. We do this in part to reinforce our position as an independent 501 (c) 3 organization with an ongoing program and to counter the 'project mentality' of activities that come and go. AMICO will reinforce our ougoing successes over the past five years in mailings and other communications to potential members.
A new area of growth could be in the United Kingdom. We have heard recently from the National Museums of Scotland, the SCRAN relationship will raise our profile with UK museums, and the JISC subscribers continue to grow. A presentation was made to the IT committee of the UK National Museums Directors Council to inform them about AMICO's activities and invite their participation.Membership Committee
At the January 2001 Executive Committee meeting, the Board-level Membership Committee was reconstituted. Max Anderson, the Whitney Museum of American Art's director, offered to take up direction of this committee and to make recruitment of new members a high priority. Resistance still seems to lie in the technical readiness of prospects (or their perceived lack of readiness). Those interested in serving on this committee should contact Jennifer Trant
AMICO Library Growth
A table summarizing Members' contributions to The AMICO Library was distributed and is available on the Members Web Site. There are now more than 77,000 works of art documented in our growing digital resource!
The AMICO Library is made available for educational and research use to colleges, universities, libraries, schools, museums and galleries. The AMICO Library is currently available to over one-million undergraduates.
52 schools 79 schools 13 schools 20 schools 671,311 students 322,119 students 139,463 students A full list of AMICO Subscribers can be found on the public Web site at http://www.amico.org/subscribe.html
College and University Users
Strong growth in AMICO Library subscribers continues. AMICO now has 144 subscribing institutions providing access to one million undergraduates in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.RLG-served subscribers total over 100,000 new users thus far in 2001. Significant new additions include the Florida State Library Consortia, offering access to users in ten colleges and universities across the state.
Consortial Subscriptions
AMICO and RLG came to an agreement this year to offer discounts to Library Consortia who purchase access to The AMICO Library for their members. This is a great way for us to quickly develop a strong user base.Negotiations are now underway with several state and regional library consortia to provide state-wide access to large education districts.
Worldwide distribution
Worldwide distribution of The AMICO Library will be available when the new ARS agreement goes into effect on July 1, 2001.
UK Subscribers through the JISC
AMICO came to an agreement this year with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK departments of Higher Education, to make The AMICO Library available to universities. This brings a potential pool of 1.43 million undergraduates. However, each school must sign up individually. To date, through the JISC offering, over 139,463 students now have access at 13 colleges and universities in the United Kingdom. This is in the first six months of accessibility.K-12 Access
The K-12 Testbed is underway. Just as with the University Testbed, we are learning from a volunteer group of early adopters about what they need to make The AMICO Library useful to them. (See the further discussion later). New distributor options (discussed in the next section) will also jump-start use of The AMICO Library in primary and secondary schools.Free Trial Access
All potential subscribers may sign up for a free one-month trial of The AMICO Library. We have placed a form on the public web site, that is regularly receiving requests from all kinds of potential users all over the worldExisting Distributors
From our inception, AMICO has worked with distributors to provide access to The AMICO Library and to make sure that there was end-user support. Our first distributor was the Research Libraries Group (RLG) who provided access to the University Testbed, and launched public subscriptions in July of 1999. OhioLINK followed, offering access to Ohio-based colleges and Universities. The University of Michigan also mounted The AMICO Library locally, and is distributing it to its user community. Full details about distributors are available on the AMICO public Web Site at http://www.amico.org/subscribe.htmlRLG (http://www.rlg.org)
AMICO has finalized a renewal of our distribution agreement with RLG; and RLG will be a world-wide distributor of The AMICO Library for another three years. RLG is close to announcing its agreement with Luna Imaging Inc. (http://www.luna-img.com) to use Luna's Insight® interface as their user environment. This will provide added functionality for browsing, comparing and zooming images. Watch for an announcement of this soon.New Distributors
This past year, AMICO has been working with a number of other distributors to broaden the range of possible access routes to The AMICO Library. Our goal is to have our content accessible in as many ways as possible, so that users do not have to look far to find it.There are several new distributorships in the planning stages now. AMICO Staff is developing contracts based on the Distributor Specification (http://www.amico.org/distribute/docs/Dist.Spec.pdf) and model Distribution Agreement (http://www.amico.org/distribute/docs/amico.dist.dev.pdf ).
- All distributors provide access to The AMICO Library under existing AMICO Library Agreements, and all receive the same financial terms.
- AMICO Members who contribute to The AMICO Library will have access to it in all forms of distribution.
H. W. Wilson (http://www.hwwilson.com) is a publisher of reference resources, based in New York City. Wilson has expressed interest in incorporating The AMICO Library into their Wilson Web suite of online titles. This will give us immediate access to a broad range of public library and school subscribers who already have contracts with Wilson, and who can 'opt in' to The AMICO Library very easily. It also provides the possibility for cross-linkages between other Wilson titles (such as The Art Index, or Current Biography) and The AMICO Library.
i4i - Infrastructures for Information (http://www.i4i.com) is a software tools developer, based in Toronto. They specialize in the creation of XML* and SGML* -based applications that enable users to work with multiple networked data sources. In response to Users desires to integrate The AMICO Library with other content, and to facilitate the creation of documents like Lesson Plans and Assignments, AMICO is partnering with i4i in the development of an XML-based toolset that interacts with an XML version of The AMICO Library. Further detail about this application is provided in Michel Vulpe's presentation.
VTLS (http://www.vtls.com) is a library systems vendor with an enhanced capacity to deliver multimedia digital library resources. In addition to offering systems that support library workflow and collections management, VTLS hosts the International Theses and Dissertation Archive*. AMICO will work with VTLS to include The AMICO Library among the resources they make available to clients worldwide.
SCRAN - Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network (http://www.scran.ac.uk) is an independent cultural heritage organization based in Edinburgh, with a mission to provide access to Scottish resources world-wide, and to the resources in Scottish Cultural Institutions. SCRAN is already distributing a significant online resource to colleges, universities and schools in the UK. AMICO will partner with SCRAN to make The AMICO Library accessible within this context, and to explore integration across our cultural resources.
* XML stands for eXtended Markup Language. See http://www.w3c.org for the current specifications.
* SGML stands for Standard Generalizable Markup Language. See http://www.w3c.org/markup/SGML
* This project will make electronic versions of theses and dissertations from around the world accessible on the Web. See http://www.ndltd.orgPlanned Coverage by Distributors
With The AMICO Library accessible in so many different ways concern was raised that we might be 'competing with ourselves' and making it difficult for any Distributor to be successful. However, when the market segments served by each Distributor are compared, it is clear that our distribution options are very complimentary.
North America United Kingdom World Major Research Universities RLG JISC/SCRAN? RLG Universities and Colleges RLG, Wilson, VTLS JISC/SCRAN? VTLS Community College/ Further Ed. Wilson JISC/SCRAN Public Libraries Wilson SCRAN Schools Wilson, i4i/AMICO SCRAN i4i/AMICO When AMICO was formed, we created a budgetary plan that divided our income between Members' dues and Subscriber fees.
In our first year, the bulk of our income was derived from Members' Dues, with some income from Subscriber fees for the University Testbed.
In our second year, the Executive Committee challenged AMICO's staff to make the distribution of income sources 50% Dues, 50% Subscription. We exceeded this.
AMICO's fiscal year runs July to June. In the 2000/2001 fiscal year, we had a budget of about $400,000. This was derived 2/3 from subscriptions and 1/3 from Membership.
In the 2001/2002 fiscal year, the budget as adopted by the Executive Committee is approximately $450,000, with 2/3 of our income from subscriptions and 1/3 from Members. This budget supports 5 staff, plus interns at the AMICO offices. The new distribution channels open up the possibility for much more income through increased subscriptions. Our "best case" budget presented to the Executive committee is approximately $900,000 with 6/7 of the budget coming from subscriptions and 1/7 coming from Membership. This would support 8 full-time staff plus interns.
Future projections of AMICO's annual budget peak at approximately $1,000,000 per year. A discussion of what might be done in the light of a budget surplus followed. It was agreed that this would be a very pleasant position to be in. Once AMICO had met obligations to those who assisted in its start-up, the Board would make a decision regarding the allocation of new funds. Some Members expressed the desire to reduce or eliminate Membership dues. It was agreed that this would seem beneficial, but that it was necessary to have some show of organizational commitment to AMICO Membership. Perhaps dues could be waived if Members met particular contribution targets over several years.AMICO staff announced a number of accomplishments for the year 2000-2001relating to the standardization of indexing in The AMICO Library and the activities of The Editorial Committee,. These included the inclusion of many more Sample Records on the Public Web Site (see http://www.amico.org/library.html), and a revision of the Data Specification.
Data Specification
The AMICO Data Specification was revised to include new examples and clarified definitions (Copies were distributed at the meeting and are available at http://www.amico.org/AMICOlibrary/dataspec.html). The revised Data Dictionary includes two new fields, both suggested at last year's meeting: the Creator Authority ID (CID), which will link to the Creator Reference File once completed, and the Creator Display Text (CTT), which presents a place for providing a meaningful display for works with complex creation history.
The Data Dictionary has also been mapped to the VRA Core Categories and to the Categories for the Description of Works of Art. These maps will be made available on the public Web Site shortly.Indexing The AMICO Library
AMICO Staff and interns have been working to enhance access to The AMICO Library by providing indexing for the data values in key fields.Object Type
Lasr year Members agreed to a short-list of Object Type terms to enable the sorting of works into AMICO Library into broad categories, such as Painting and Sculpture. Object Type (OTY) terms were standardized for the entire AMICO Library following the list agreed upon at last year's meeting (http://members.amico.org/comm/edit/object.types.html).Dates
Searching by date is one of our key user requirements. AMICO has developed a program - that runs when records are validated - to index the free text dates found in Object Creation Date Text (OCT) when numeric equivalents are not provided in Object Creation Date Start (OCS) and Object Creation Date End (OCE). However, not all dates can be indexed automatically in this way.The Date Indexing project applies the guidelines agreed upon at last year's meeting to those dates that cannot be indexed (see http://members.amico.org/comm/edit/date_parsing.html). We have already indexed dates in 11,700+ records. This project will tie in with the development of numeric equivalents to index Dynastic date ranges that the Editorial Committee has expressed an interest in undertaking.
A tool developed by AMICO staff for indexing dates will also be made available to members so that the provision of indexing dates can be done easily for those Members who do not export these from their local systems.
Dates found in Metadata Media Date (XDA) have been standardized to eight, six, or four digits, in line with the guidelines in the Data Dictionary.
Creator Reference File
AMICO is creating a Creator Reference File to collocate data already being contributed by members, and provide a central resource for information about artists. A working draft of the proposed structure of this file, including fields, guidelines and examples, was distributed to all Members, and was reviewed in the Editorial Committee breakout session.Supporting User Access
Members were encouraged to expand the range of data fields currently contributed in their AMICO Catalog Records, and to focus particularly on dates, geography, creator name and culture. Doing so will facilitate user access. The group was also reminded to refer to the Term Occurrences tool in the Contribution Management System to view the values in their own, and other fields, to see how local practice compares with others.Both the Members and the Public Web sites underwent a redesign this year, geared towards making information more accessible.
Public Web Site http://www.amico.org
Our public web site provides information about becoming an AMICO Member and subscribing to The AMICO Library. It also houses the Thumbnail Catalog - the public view of all works in The AMICO Library. New sections were created on our public Web site to highlight content for different users:
- Join was created for museums interested in becoming AMICO Members, and also includes a list of current AMICO Members.
- AMICO Library describes the content of our digital resource, features a large number of sample records, and includes a place to request a free trial subscription.
- Subscribe highlights details for subscribers, including list of existing subscribers and an outline of the benefits of subscription.
- Use features how people use The AMICO Library™, and provides a forum for sharing experiences in Schools, Universities and Museums. The Model Assignments are featured here.
- Distribute houses all documents specifically for our distributors.
- About includes a list of all the AMICO Documents, contact details and a site search.
Members' Web Site http://members.amico.org
This password-protected site (restricted to AMICO Members) houses documents related to the business of running AMICO and facilitates communication among AMICO Members. It's designed to be the Hub for Member activity.From the homepage, you can see exactly what is going on with all aspects of AMICO - including upcoming deadlines.
Other sites are linked along the top of the page:
- AMICO takes you to the Public Web Site.
- Members takes you to the Members' home page.
- Contribute takes you to the Contribution Management System.
- University takes you to the University Users page.
- School takes you to the K-12 Testbed pages.
Two-tier menus, allow deeper one-click access to documents, including Discussion Archives and all the Committee pages. Committee Pages feature To Do lists, and supporting documents keyed to each task.
A new "How To" section has been added to answer common questions and to help steer Members AMICO processes. A search function and a site map have also been added to the Members' Web site.
Contribution Management System http://update.amico.org
AMICO has one window each year to update the Contribution Management System. This comes immediately following the shipment of the new edition of the Library to our Distributors, and before we begin to receive contribution lists in the fall.If you have any idea or suggestions of how to improve the CMS system please respond to the calls for input on the Editorial and Technical Committee Lists.
Suggestions from Members
During discussion it was suggested that a search that operated across all of the Web site would be helpful, as sometimes it's difficult to remember where particular documents are. AMICO's Webmaster will implement this search in the next few weeks.AMICO has four working committees of the Membership who get together at each Annual Meeting(and occasionally throughout the year) to address issues related to their area of expertise. AMICO Committees provide guidance to AMICO staff, and make recommendations where necessary to the AMICO Board. AMICO's committee structure is as follows:
The group reviewed the preliminary agendas developed for each committee prior to the meeting, and suggested additional items for discussion.
- Committee Background Documents
- Editorial Agenda and Committee Report
- Joint Editorial and Technical Committee Report
- Rights Agenda and Committee Report
- Technical Agenda and Committee Report
- Users and Uses Agenda and Committee Report
Last modified on October 10, 2001
