[MCN-L] ConservationSpace

[Erin Coburn]

To: The conservation profession and to the museum, library and archive  
community that conservation serves
 
From: Kenneth Hamma, Project Manager
 
Subject: An open source application for conservation documentation:  
The design phase
 
www.conservationspace.org 
 
With funding from the Research in Information Technology Program of  
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (http://rit.mellon.org), two community  
design meetings for conservation documentation will be held in 2009,  
the first in early March at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,  
primarily for North American participants; the second in early April  
at the National Gallery, London, primarily for UK and European  
participants.
 
The focus of these meetings is solely on the requirements, as  
described by professional conservators and conservation scientists,  
for a software application that would support and help to manage their  
work, its documentation, and related scientific data. This narrow  
focus on design is intended to increase the likelihood of achieving a  
comprehensive requirements document for application development later  
in the process, while setting aside for the present the related topics  
of specific technology and standards.  (Because it will be difficult  
for conservators to discuss requirements without mentioning standards,  
two experts will note and record standards-related issues for later  
discussion, so that the meetings can retain their focus on the  
functional requirements.)
 
The core team, listed on the website, has been selected from a broad  
range of potential participants for these meetings, taking into  
account their individual engagement with information technology as  
well as their conservation and science expertise.  Serving in an  
advisory capacity, they identified potential participants from a  
variety of collecting institutions: libraries, archives, and museums  
of art, archeology, anthropology, natural history, and science.
 
While the number of participants that could be accommodated at each of  
these meetings is necessarily limited, all resulting documents will be  
public and available for community comment and input.  This includes  
narrative summaries of the discussions as well as initial drafts of a  
requirements document for the development of an application. It is  
expected that there will be two such public drafts before a final  
document is prepared at the end of 2009. Their availability will be  
announced to the conservation field, and feedback will be solicited,  
as widely as possible.
 
The website identified above has additional information on the core  
project team, closely related efforts, and the full narrative from the  
application to the Research in Information Technology Program at the  
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
 
Kenneth Hamma
 
+1 310 270 8008
khamma at me.com 
 
368 Patel Place
Palm Springs CA 92264
 
www.becomingdigital.org 
www.conservationspace.org