State of Minnesota IAIA Grant
Interim Report for January 1, 1998 - March 31, 1998
Submitted by
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Walker Art Center


Project Summary

The primary goal of the Integrated Arts Information Access (IAIA) Project is to develop a user-friendly interface to a standards-based information framework which will give remote audiences access to the Walker Art Center's and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts' permanent collections, archives, and libraries for K-12 educational and non-commercial use via the Internet. Core resources available through this common porthole will include media (images, audio, video, software, etc.) and related information (label copy, curriculum, manuscripts, calendar/programming, external links, publications, etc.). In addition, links between the resources will be provided and new "guides" created, from distance learning curriculum to on-line exhibitions. The scope of this project requires an ongoing commitment from both institutions. During the initial phase of this project, July 1, 1997 to June 30, 1999, the focus will be on the development of a robust information framework, the digitization of primary resources, and content development.

The project managers are Robin Dowden, Integrated Information Resources Manager at the Walker Art Center (WAC), and Scott Sayre, Director of Print and Electronic Media at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA).


Planning/Infrastructure

The first component in the IAIA project involves the research, identification, and development of robust information standards, data structures and technical infrastructure which will support the overall system.

During this reporting period, the identification and selection of supporting software and hardware tools was a primary focus for the IAIA project team, since these decisions will determine the database, supporting computer hardware, and Internet service provider necessary to meet the data processing and delivery demands of the project. With the assistance of a group of volunteers from the Dayton Hudson Corporation's Information Services Division, the IAIA team assessed the financial costs of a range of infrastructure options and identified developmental milestones. Members of the Dayton's team are currently working with a number of their major vendors in an attempt to negotiate product donations and discounts. It is hoped that these efforts may expand the breadth of financially viable software and hardware solutions for the IAIA team to choose from.

Concurrently, research continued on the design and development of the IAIA information framework. Members of IAIA's project teams met to begin the complex process of defining interfaces and toolsets for accessing, organizing, and presenting IAIA resources. A day-long retreat was held in late March with contracted database consultant Jim Blackaby, Senior Systems Developer for United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Jonathan Gross, President of Catalyst Corporation, a museum consulting firm based in Minneapolis. During this retreat, the group created a relational data model of IAIA resources and examined Inquery, a text search engine and candidate for integrating IAIA's different data formats.

Loosely based on the data model prepared by the International Documentation Committee of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC), the IAIA data model defines what the data is rather than how it is used. At the highest level, the IAIA data model consists of five principal entities: objects (things), events, agents (people), subjects (concepts), and places. These entities and the relationships among them can be used to document any of the IAIA resources. The task of particularizing this framework and creating a data structure which supports the intellectual and physical worlds in which the resources exist led to the definition of four additional entities: educational material, library (bibliographic records), texts (references and actual texts), and derivatives. The next steps in this data modeling process will be to complete the logical data model by defining the metadata and their relationships, and then to create the physical database that will be the container for the actual data.

More information and working documents can be found on a Web site which is currently under development at a temporary URL:www.walkerarts.org/IAIA/.


Digitization

The second component of the IAIA project involves the digital conversion of assets from both institutions' collections, archives, libraries, and programming.

Both museums continue their efforts to convert new and existing electronic and hard copy assets into standards-based electronic resources. MIA and WAC team members met in February to evaluate the feasibility of adopting the developing MPEG2 format as a standard for archiving and eventually delivering video archives. During this meeting team members compared a variety of encoding and delivery tools and strategies. A temporary assessment determined that the high quality of the MPEG2 video held future promise but the tools currently available are not yet mature enough to support its immediate adoption as an IAIA standard. Specifically, MPEG2 is not accessible by most users via the Internet.

In order to achieve greater quality and process control in its image digitizing procedures the MIA's Photo Services department has been working with Tom Schaff, a digital imaging consultant from the Electronic Easel. Together, Mr. Schaff and the MIA team are developing formally documented procedures for calibrating, scanning, and evaluating reproductions of works of art. The resulting procedures will be shared between the MIA and WAC.

Members of MIA's Interactive Media Department and Education Division identified 21 educational video segments and 15 animated sequences that they will digitally reformat for real-time distribution via the IAIA project. They also continue to organize and log the Institute's video archives to determine what other resources they can make available to the public in future phases of the project. Members of the project team also began to review the feasibility of reformatting audio tour resources for both linear and non-linear tours of the museum's permanent and temporary exhibitions.

At the Walker, the IAIA content selection committee composed of visual arts curators, educators, and New Media Initiatives staff continues to prioritize objects and their images, and related video and audio assets, for digitization and eventual delivery as IAIA resources. 650 objects, 24 documentary videos, and roughly a dozen audiotapes have been selected and the process of converting them to digital form has begun. The Walker used its March film series, Women in the Director's Chair, as an opportunity to develop Real Video capture standards, quality control, and testing procedures. Real Video is a streaming video format that will probably be used to deliver WAC's IAIA video assets on the Internet. Examples of these experiments can be found at Walker Web site www.walkerart.org/programs/widc98/widc_clipframe.html.


Intellectual Access

The third component of the IAIA project is the "markup" of the digitized assets so that they can be easily found and used according to multiple criteria.

During this reporting period both the MIA and WAC continued to work on the development of data models and standards consistent with other developing national and international standards. In February, both institutions successfully mapped and submitted object related test data and images to the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) project. This process served as a significant exercise since the developing database for IAIA object data is based around the AMICO core data structure.

In March, IAIA formally applied to take part in the Consortium for the Interchange of Museum Information's (CIMI) Metadata Testbed Project. IAIA's participation in this project will allow the MIA and WAC, as well as other CIMI participating institutions, to assess the applicability of the Dublin Core as a standard for data interchange and resource discovery within a museum context.

Also in March, IAIA project leaders met with representatives from the Minnesota Historical Society's Information Processing Division to discuss each institution's current and future plans for integrating and providing public access to collection and archive information. The group decided to meet regularly to keep each other informed of the status of these projects and to begin sharing data standards information. Discussions also focused on potential opportunities for future collaborative projects, possibly expanding the IAIA collaboration beyond the WAC and MIA.

During this period, at the MIA, over 500 collection records were validated against curatorial file records to assure their accuracy, consistency and completeness. Processes were also begun to convert and reformat curatorial files and docent-training materials into fielded text records. This process will assist in facilitating future queries and object related access to these documents once they are incorporated into the IAIA database.

At the Walker, Robin Dowden, IAIA project manager, and staff from theWAC library met with Dr. Helen Humeston, Professor of Library Science at the College of St. Catherine, to gain a better understanding of library practices for describing non-book materials. Dr. Humeston has been contracted by the Walker to prepare MARC templates and cataloguing guidelines for the description of sound recordings, video recordings, and ephemera and to evaluate existing records (shelf lists and card catalogues) for conversion to electronic form. MARC formats are library standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form.


Adding Value/Creating New Content

The fourth component of the IAIA project requires the development of original, "added value," educational, and exhibition-related content.

In March of 1998, the WAC and MIA received preliminary notification that they will be jointly awarded a major grant from MCI Communications Corporation to assist in disseminating and marketing the educational resources produced through the IAIA and ArtsNet Minnesota projects. The MCI funded project, entitled ArtsLink Minnesota, will produce a central gateway homepage to link teachers, parents, and students to the myriad of Internet-based art education resources in the state of Minnesota. MCI funding also will be used to produce printed promotional and training materials, to conduct field training with educators, and for related promotional events.

Also in March, the IAIA project team hosted an informational meeting with members of the Minnesota Center for Arts Education's (MCAE) professional development program staff. The primary focus of this meeting was to update the MCAE staff on the goals and current status of the IAIA project. At the conclusion of the meeting, MCAE and IAIA staff discussed potential opportunities for future collaboration and committed to keep each other up-to-date as the project progresses and collaborative opportunities arise.

The MIA continued to work on the development of the first IAIA educational module. Internet-based curriculum materials can provide teachers and community leaders access to the MIA collection who do not have access to the museum itself, or can be used to complement a museum visit. Curriculum materials will be designed to increase teachers' confidence in using art as a resource for enhancing their classroom studies. Adequate background and object information will be provided to enable teachers to effectively integrate the museum's collection into language arts, social studies, math, science, and music, as well as art, curricula.

In January, the Institute hired Willy Lee as the IAIA project Web specialist. Together Lee, MIA Curriculum Specialist Susan Hundman, and MIA Educational Writer Debbi Hegstrom began exploring prototype interfaces and activities for the first module, which focuses on World Ceramics. The MIA World Ceramics educational module focuses on the development and use of ceramics from the time of early human societies up until today. Four key questions are used to explore such areas as cultural context, methodology, aesthetics, and function:

  1. Where does it come from? gives a global perspective of the diversity and range of ceramic production with the aid of maps and images related to specific countries or cultures.

  2. How was it made? uses descriptive narrative and detailed diagrams of processes to discuss a wide variety of techniques and materials employed.

  3. What does it look like? points out important aspects of decoration and style, based on differing aesthetic values and cultural practices.

  4. How was it used? discusses the function of the objects within the societies that created them.

This module is designed to encourage students to ask further questions, make their own discoveries, and appreciate the rich cultural diversity manifested in 20 different objects from around the world. Activities and discussion questions are available at different levels.

In late March, the MIA began interviewing candidates and contractors to fill its Web Curriculum Materials Producer position. Once filled, this position will be responsible for writing and directing the development educational modules and tools for the second year of the IAIA project. Internet-based materials will be presented in an accessible format and designed to be used flexibly, according to individual needs. All materials will be developed to meet state standards for graduation as outlined in the Profile of Learning for Literature and the Arts. In keeping with the museum's mission to promote cultural understanding, these materials will capitalize on the multicultural diversity of the MIA's collection.

During this reporting period, the Walker launched two initiatives to define educational modules that will be based on the resources provided by the IAIA information framework.

1. Teacher Centered Educational Modules

To coordinate and define the first of these initiatives, the Walker hired Maria Roussos, whose work at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Chicago, Illinois, has focused on the combination of constructivist or "activity based" pedagogy with the emerging area of immersive experiences in K-12 education. Ms. Roussos was on-site at the Walker the month of February, during which time she investigated the museum's existing educational programming, prepared a structural outline of the Walker's IAIA educational initiatives, and produced a workplan for developing a prototype set of educational modules for K-12 use to be delivered by June 30, 1998, and over the two year course of the IAIA grant. The educational units defined in the workplan are viewed both as tools for the better use of the IAIA resources as well as learning models for the development of future units.

The pedagogical objectives identified in plan include:

The overall goal of the on-line hands-on education units will be to engage students in using their observational and analytical skills to construct knowledge and formulate interpretation in relation to the arts. Additionally, the units may aim to improve students' visual literacy and to introduce students to research methods using the variety of resources provided by the IAIA framework.

The units will be publicly available for use by students, parents, and teachers. Although they can certainly be used as classroom resources, they do not assume the role of a fully developed curriculum for the school district.

The primary delivery method for the educational units will be via technological means, with some possible extensions and connections to more traditional on-site activities. The Internet will be the main delivery tool, whether this means providing a description of an activity to do in the classroom, or an innovative immersive environment that can be experienced on-line. However, technology will be used as an aid, not as an end in itself.

2. Audience Centered Educational Modules

The second educational initiative launched by the Walker during this reporting period involves the development of an educational module that uses the actual experiences of Walker audiences to create an on-line exploration of the range of the museum's programs and to reveal the linkages between them. The module is structured around a selection of community members who explore the Walker's rich array of art experiences (permanent collection, performing arts, film, education and community programs, new media, publications, archives, etc.). Each program or event that a participant encounters will naturally raise questions and suggest further explorations that will lead to additional Walker resources, demonstrating the wealth of Walker's interconnected materials, and the participant's educational process as it unfolds. Each participant will keep a journal and engage in a series of audio/video interviews that will allow us to track their experience.

The experiences of the participants in this project will be rendered on the Web site as guided tours through the Walker and IAIA resources. The interface for this module will allow the Web site visitor to engage in the educational process in tandem with the various participants, following the links created by them and exploring beyond those links deeper into the IAIA database. Directed by Nathan Braulick and Lynne Sowder of Y-CORE, this project is scheduled to begin the first week of April when the first meetings and interviews with the initial participants will be undertaken.

The development of the Walker's IAIA educational components involves several stages of implementation. Documentation and workplans can be found on IAIA project information Web site currently under development at a temporary URL: www.walkerarts.org/IAIA/.


Goals to be achieved by June 30, 1998 (status report #2)

1. Digitize 350 images of works of art from each collection.

MIA: As of 3/31/98 the MIA had digitized over 750 objects and corrected and formatted 500 of those images to meet the IAIA/AMICO imaging guidelines.

Walker: As of 3/31/98 approximately 400 digital images have been created and formatted according to the IAIA/AMICO specifications.

As members of AMICO, both institutions have digital image delivery commitments that fall well within the scope and deadlines of the IAIA grant and help ensure that such obligations will be met.

2. Provide contextual information for images.

MIA and Walker have existing permanent collection systems that will provide the bulk of the structured data that will be delivered through the IAIA project. 40% of the MIA and 100% of WAC permanent collections are described in these systems. MIA and Walker have mapped the elements/fields of their collection management systems to the AMICO data structure. Each institution recently delivered 100 images and contextual information to an AMICO test bed in February of 1998 and between 350-500 records in March of 1998.

3. Create K-12 educational modules.

The MIA continued the development of World Ceramics its first IAIA-based educational content module. WAC developed an extensive structural outline of IAIA educational initiatives and prepared workplans for the creation of specific activities. MIA and WAC continue to work together on the development of curriculum materials for ArtsNet Minnesota, which provides a model for the development of IAIA educational modules.

4. Create Web site to provide joint access IAIA content.

A Web site containing a full IAIA project description and working documents is currently in development and will be launched in late March or early April of 1998. Both institutions are continuing to investigate software and hardware requirements and possible hosts for the IAIA server. WAC and MIA Web designers and project managers have held a number of meetings to begin defining interface design strategies. Access to the IAIA database will be available on the Internet by June 30, 1998.