Building Digital Art Resources for the Community: Finding Scalable Strategies and a Balance of Interests

David Bearman
President
Archives & Museum Informatics

Jennifer Trant
Partner & Principal Consultant
Archives & Museum Informatics

In 1997 the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) was formed to enable educational use of museum multimedia. After five years, more than four million potential users have access to the digitized portions of the collections of 39 member museums. The massive potential scale of this enterprise, and the delicate balance of interests that must be maintained among academic users, museums, rights holders, and data distribution functionality make the enterprise an important laboratory. AMICO’s position with respect other initiatives in this arena will be directly adfdressed.