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1. Concept of Networking Cultural Heritage How familiar is your organization and its constituents with the terms of this vision and with the current issues that have to be grappled with to make this vision a reality? Somewhat |
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2a Given this definition of advocacy, how does your organization advocate for networking cultural heritage? The Smithsonian advocates, through individual participation of key staff members, in other organizations. The Smithsonian as a whole does not speak with one voice, but through groups such as the Museum Computer Network, ALA and CIMI |
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2b Do you have a different working definition of advocacy than the one we offer here? No |
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2c Projects? Of the projects that your organization participates in, which are related to digital networking? Projects with CIMI; many different digitizing projects throughout the Smithsonian will eventuate in something networked, incl;uding our Collections Information Systems (ArtCIS, CIS at NMAmerican History and NM American Art) and websites such as NMAA's |
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2d Partners? If you collaborate with partners in any networking advocacy activity, who are they? RLG, CIMI |
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2e Measure Success? How do you measure the success of your networking advocacy projects? We don't; am unaware of any operating benchmarks for networking cultural projects |
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2f Target? Besides NINCH members, what groups should NINCH target for advocacy? University presses! At a recent CNI meeting, the director of the Johns Hopkins University Press gave a good talk about how academic presses are giving away the output of their staff, that is, their intellectual property, to commercial publishers and then buying it back at huge prices. University presses are operating on the wrong model, he stresed, viewing their activity as academic outreach when they should view themselves as engaging commercially in digital output. |
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No answer
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1. --intellectual property 2. -standards 5. --access 4. --economics 6. -internationalism 2 -preservation === Intellectual property would be high up; standards are impt but don't see NINCH as addressing this as others are; Access--what does this mean? retrieval mechanism or economic issues? Economics is a big problem; many organizations, SI included, don't effectively plan or budget for networking; Internationalism (didn't see as relevant); Preservation is a big priority in two ways: first, preservation in the traditional museum sense, to the extent that networking can further that objective; and, second, the archival sense of electronic products, preserving the trail of authenticity is impt in the digital realm; this has not yet been worked out and needs to be; the Smithsonian Archives is working on this issue; as websites can be changed quickly, the scholarly content and archives mutate quickly; who keeps track of this? procedural understandings and protocols (in non-communications sense) need to be worked out. |
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