Open Collections: Exploring Online Cultural Resources
Monday, June 18, 9:45 a.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Presented with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services
and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Registration fee: $12 (includes lunch)
Register online at http://www.movingimage.us/open or call 718-784-4520.
In fewer than fifteen years, the Internet has become an everyday,
indispensable aspect of life, work, and learning, radically changing the
way we access information. Presenting museum collections online, once a
novelty, has become a necessity. Cultural organizations face an array of
choices about how to represent their collections and how to help users
interpret them.
How can institutions build accessible online collections while
simultaneously meeting internal digitization needs? How can standards of
quality be maintained as technologies and users change? What steps can
these organizations take now to ensure that their intended audiences can
find and use their collections in the future? For scholars, what are the
long-term implications of this proliferation of online resources?
On June 18, Moving Image will sponsor a daylong symposium devoted to
these questions. In a series of three panels, experts in the field will
explore how online cultural resources, especially those composed of
primary-source materials, are planned, developed, and used. The
symposium will bring museum and library professionals together with
information-technology experts and scholars to confront issues that
involve them all. Panelists and moderators include professionals from
leading cultural and academic institutions, including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Smithsonian Archives of
American Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, Yale University, and the
City University of New York.
Panel topics:
Humanities Research in the Digital Age
How are scholars, teachers, researchers, and students using online
humanities resources? A panel of professors who have proven themselves
adept researchers will discuss how they use these resources, how that
use has affected their work as scholars and educators, and how they’d
like these resources to evolve in order to better serve their needs.
Sharing What We Know: Creating Useful and Sustainable Digital Content
How are museums, libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions
creating and disseminating information online? How do we choose what to
make available? What software and standards can we, and should we, use?
How do we raise money for these projects? How useful are our online
collections and exhibitions for users?
Open-Source Culture
Emerging tools and technologies promise to allow museums, libraries, and
archives to efficiently and inexpensively enhance public access to their
collections. An expert panel will present an illustrated tour of
available and emerging tools and their benefits, costs, and impact.
