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Technology, Scholarship, and the Humanities:
The Implications of Electronic Information
Descriptions of the Sponsoring Organizations
The Getty Art History Information Program
The Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP), one of seven operating
programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, seeks to make art-historical information
more accessible to scholars and researchers through advanced computer
technology. It does so by promoting common perspectives and standards among
international institutions and organizations on projects in four general
areas: coordinating vocabularies to facilitate consistent data entry and
retrieval; providing bibliographic services; assembling art-historical
databases; and conducting research to help define automation directions for
art information. AHIP plays a catalytic role in helping to focus attention on
the collective changes facing the information community in this decade and
beyond. Among AHIP's numerous projects are the Art and Architecture Thesaurus,
the Bibliography of the History of Art, the Provenance Index, and the Art
Information Task Force.
The American Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private nonprofit
federation of 52 national scholarly organizations. The purpose of the Council,
as set forth in its constitution, is "the advancement of humanistic studies
and the maintenance and strengthening of relations among the national
societies devoted to such studies." Included in the program of the Council
are awards to individual scholars to advance research in the humanities and
humanistic aspects of the social sciences; support for international scholarly
research and exchanges; activities concerned with the identification of
present and future needs of humanistic scholarship, and planning and
development to meet these needs; and organizational functions. In addition,
the Council has fiscal and adminstrative oversight for the Council for
International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which administers the Fulbright
program.
Organized in 1919 and incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1924,
the ACLS was granted a federal charter through the United States
Congress in 1982.
The Coalition for Networked Information
The Coalition for Networked Information was founded in March 1990 to help
realize the promise of advanced networks and high-performance computing for
information access and delivery. The Coalition was established by three
associations: The Association for Research Libraries (ARL), CAUSE, and EDUCOM.
ARL is an association promoting equitable access and effective use of recorded
knowledge supporting teaching, research, and scholarship. CAUSE and EDUCOM are
dedicated to introducing, using, and managing information technology and
related resources in research in general and higher education. The Coalition
for Networked Information promotes the creation of access to information
resources in networked environments in order to enrich scholarship and
enhance intellectual productivity.
A Task Force of institutions and organizations able and willing to contribute
resources and attention to the mission of the Coalition was created in 1990
and continues to grow. This Task Force now provides a common vehicle by which
over 200 institutions and organizations pursue a shared vision of
information management and how it must change in the 1990s to meet the
social, educational, and economic opportunities and challenges of the 21st
century. Members of the Task Force include higher education institutions,
publishers, network service providers, computer hardware, software, and
systems companies, library networks and organizations, and public and state
libraries.
Council on Library Resources
The Council on Library Resources was founded in 1956 with support from the
Ford Foundation to aid in the solution of the problems of libraries generally,
and research libraries particularly, by putting emerging technologies to use
in order to improve operating performance and expand library services. While
continuing its initial concentration on technological applications in
libraries, the Council had gradually expanded its focus to reflect changing
needs and opportunities in areas such as linking computer systems, making
library management more effective, improving access to library materials,
addressing international concerns, exploring cooperative approaches, and
enhancing the skills of librarians. The Council now derives its support from
a number of foundations in areas consonant with their program interests. The
areas currently receiving attention include human resources, the economics
of information services, infrastructure, and access and processing.
The Research Libraries Group, Inc.
The Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) is a not-for-profit membership
corporation of more than 120 universities, archives, historical societies,
museums, and other institutions devoted to improving access to information
that supports research and learning. RLG owns and operates RLIN(r) (the
Research Libraries Information Network) to serve the research and information
management needs of both its members and nonmember institutions and
individuals worldwide
RLG's objectives for the 1990s include:
- to support cooperative solutions among research libraries, archives,
museums, and related repositories;
- to create an information delivery service capable of putting catalog,
index, abstract, full-text and image information directly into the hands
of scholars and students;
- to manage coordinated preservation projects that extend models developed
for the preservation of brittle paper materials to photographs and
electronic media;
- to develop a local computer system serving archives, museums, and related
repositories, linked to an increasingly comprehensive database of primary
cultural and scientific information; and
- to facilitate the most effective access to information resources.
RLG membership is open to any nonprofit institution with an educational,
cultural, or scientific mission.
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