SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

CONTENTdm Special Interest Group

Organizer: Glee Willis , University of Nevada, Reno
Moderator: Greg Zick, President of DiMeMa.

With each new release, CONTENTdm's capabilities as a digital assets management system continue to expand.  Of special interest to VRA attendees is the degree to which DiMeMa (the developers of CONTENTdm) has enhanced CONTENTdm's classroom presentation/slide show features. Greg Zick, president of DiMeMa, will talk about CONTENTdm's latest features and future directions including e-commerce extensions, additional OAI implementations, support for EAD, and additional e-learning features.  CONTENTdm users are welcome to share their experiences in using CONTENTdm's classroom presentation features.  This session will also allow potential users to learn more about the latest version of this digital assets management system.

Special Interest Group 2
Monday March 7th, 12:30 pm-2:00 pm

Museum Visual Resources

Organizers: Jane Ferger, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Heidi Raatz, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

The Museum Visual Resources Special Interest Group provides an opportunity for museum professionals to gather and to discuss issues that are particular to museums. Following several points of business, including the election of next year's coordinator and recorder, we will review the 2001 and the 2005 surveys. The focus of the discussions will revolve around the changing roles of the museum visual resources professional and the specific role, if any, the museum VR librarian has in a museum’s creation, cataloging and management of digital images.

Special Interest Group 3
Monday March 7th, 4:00 pm-5:30 pm

IRIS User Group Meeting

Organizer: Norine Duncan, Brown University
Speakers: Norine Duncan, Brown University and Linda McRae, University of South Florida

The prototype of IRIS 2005 will be demonstrated and critiqued. The results of a project to share an authority file among IRIS users will be presented. All are welcome to attend! You do not need to be an IRIS user to learn from or contribute to this discussion. The Image Resource Information System (IRIS), an implementation of the VRA Core Categories in FileMaker Pro software, evolved as a cooperative venture, beginning in 1997. The release of FMP version 7 in spring 2004 provided an opportunity for developing a new version of IRIS to take advantage of the new FileMaker features. IRIS 2005 incorporates changes mandated by version 7 of FileMaker as well as cross-fertilization with other IRIS-derived systems (SnapDragon and Pictor). Our work reflects the desire to be more compliant with version 3 of the Core Categories, the interest in testing the recommendations of CCO, efforts to facilitate data sharing within the IRIS community and beyond, and interoperability with image presentation systems such as Luna Insight and MDID2.

Special Interest Group 3
Tuesday March 8th, 12:30 pm-2:00 pm

ARTstor User Group Meeting

Moderated by Kimberly Harvey, ARTstor, Christina Updike, James Madison University, and Elisa Lanzi, Smith College.

ARTstor representatives participating in the User Group meeting include:  James Shulman, Max Marmor, Kimberly Harvey, and others.

Artstor is a digital library of art images, associated information, and software tools designed to enhance teaching, learning and scholarship. ARTstor contains approximately 300,000 images of art, architecture and archeology from a wide range of cultures and time periods. Topics include: interoperability, upcoming collections, update on the Institutional Hosting Pilot, plans for metadata improvement, technology (Offline Image Viewer, Personal Collections), and usage stats and user feedback.  Conference participants are encouraged to submit questions in advance to the moderators. Several ARTstor users will briefly share their experience in order to facilitate discussion.

Special Interest Group 5
Wednesday March 9th, 12:30 pm-2:00 pm

Madison Digital Image Database (MDID) Users Group Organizer: Christina B. Updike, James Madison University
Moderator: Sandra Maxfield, James Madison University

The Madison Digital Image Database system is free, open source digital image software developed at James Madison University and now used by dozens of institutions. This session will bring MDID users, and potential users, together to share their experiences and to ask questions. The MDID 2 system was released in 2004 with many new features including support for multiple collections with cross collection searching, flexible data structures, data exchange through XML, and personal collections. Members of the MDID team will be available to help facilitate discussion and to talk about ongoing development and enhancements. (More information at http://mdid.org/)