Scott Sayre Presentation Abstract

Making the Virtual Library a Reality: The Conception and Development
of Two Museum-based Projects.

The Internet offers Art Museums a variety of new vehicles for distributing their collections and resources as integrated digital libraries.  Within these "virtual libraries" museums are able to collaborate and integrate disparate collections like never before. This presentation will explore two such collaborative projects,
ArtsConnectEd (www.artsconnected.org) and The Art Museum Image Consortium, "AMICO" (www.amico.org), which both originated in 1997 and today serve large regional and worldwide audiences.
ArtsConnectEd, a collaborative project between The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, was designed to serve primary and secondary school teachers and students.  The site
integrates the both museum's collections, multimedia resources, texts, audio/video archives and teaching materials with a user interface and tool sets specially designed for this audience. Today,
ArtsConnectEd serves almost a half million regional users on annual basis.
AMICO is a growing international non-profit consortium of art museums who have committed to building an integrated digital library of their collections for educational distribution and access.  AMICO licenses
the library to over three million subscribers worldwide via seven commercial and non-commercial distributors.  Subscribers to The AMICO Library include Universities, Primary and Secondary schools and
Public Libraries.
Issues to be discussed in this presentation will include collaborative benefits, funding, data collection, integration, multiple interfaces, and channels for distribution.