Abstract
The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO http://www.amico.org ) is
a not-for-profit organization formed in late 1997 to create a digital multimedia
library of art available for licensed educational use. Twenty-three founding
members contributed digital documentation of approximately 20,000 works in their
collection to a test library. In collaboration with the Research Libraries Group
(RLG), AMICO made this collection available to sixteen universities as part of
the University Testbed . This paper summarizes the results of the AMICO
University Testbed, including user studies, focus groups conducted by AMICO, and
online surveys conducted by Cornell Universities Interactive Media Group. The
Authors will review their implications for the design and delivery of rich
primary source materials for humanities scholarship, including the first edition
of the AMICO Library -- approximately 40,000 works from 30 institutions -- to be
released in July 1999.
The Authors: Jennifer Trant, Executive Director, AMICO and David Bearman,
Director Strategy and Research, AMICO have been involved in development of
online humanities knowledge bases for several decades. They co-chair the annual
Museums and the Web Conference and the bi-annual International Cultural Heritage
Informatics Meetings (ICHIM), and consult for consortia of cultural heritage
institutions worldwide in their capacities as partners in Archives & Museum
Informatics. Their papers and research reports have appeared in numerous online
and print journals.