On October 5, 1999, thirty policymakers from museums and libraries around the country assembled at the Chicago Historical Society. They represented organizations as diverse as the New York Public Library, Yale University Library, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, yet the participants had one topic on their minds - the impact of the World Wide Web on their collections-based institutions. It was an eye opening experience that gave them new insight into critical issues facing libraries and museums as they carve out a presence on the World Wide Web.

The brainchild of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Chicago Historical Society, the two-day conference, entitled Collections, Content, and the Web, was intended to foster a new line of discussion between two cultural communities and to address issues of joint concern. The conference and the ensuing report were organized around a core mission of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) - that of strengthening the service of museums and libraries through collaborations. The meeting and publication were funded through an IMLS National Leadership Grant as a model project of collaboration.

The conference was described as “invigorating,” “extraordinarily useful,” “valuable,” “fascinating,” “organized and well-managed,” by participants. Co-organizer Bernard Reilly, of the Chicago Historical Society, says, “Participants were excited about the synergy. A lot of people were heady with the realization that there was a whole acreage of common ground between museums and libraries.”

New Grant Leads to New Idea
The idea for the conference grew out of a series of conversations between Bernard Reilly and Abby Smith, Director of Programs at CLIR, about intellectual property and the range of financial, organizational, legal and other concerns that might affect and inform museum and library decisions about putting collections on the Web. According to Smith, the emergence of the National Leadership Grants for museum and library collaborations in 1998 by IMLS signaled that the time was right for starting a discussion between the two types of organizations.

“The IMLS National Leadership Grants are very far-sighted. They fund activities in areas that are new to many of these organizations. The new line of grants challenged us to think of new solutions to old problems.” Smith said. This conference marked the first time CLIR had hosted an event that involved museums.

“CLIR does a lot of convening,” Smith said of her organization, which, unlike many other library organizations has no membership base. The independently funded group commissions studies, holds meetings, sponsors leadership institutes and fellowships, and is generally involved in gathering and disseminating information that responds to the needs of librarians and archivists.

Convening the Leaders
“The key to the conference,” says Bernard Reilly, “was getting policy and decision makers to attend.” He and Smith worked hard to identify top tier people charged with Web site management from the policy side of the house rather than the technical side. They had some contacts in the museum and library fields, but also had to make “cold-calls.” What Reilly and Smith discovered was that the policy leaders came from different organizational divisions. “There was no real consistent place where Web site strategy was being made. Sometimes it was in the imaging department, or in the director's office, or in marketing. We made a special effort to identify and enlist the highest appropriate people in the chain of command,” says Reilly.

To provide a framework for the discussion, the conference planners commissioned three short papers on the themes technology, audience, and collections. The papers were mailed to conference invitees a few weeks prior to the meeting.

Anne R. Kenney, of Cornell University Library, wrote “Mainstreaming Digitization into the Mission of Cultural Repositories,” which focuses on issues of technology. In her paper she calls on museums and libraries to make digitization a normal part of doing business, and she describes the implications of having digital collections and providing digital services. The paper of Katherine P. Spiess and Spencer R. Crew, of the National Museum of American History, entitled “If You Build it and They Come, Will They Come Back?” examines audience. It describes the need for collaboration within and among institutions to respond to the demands of the diverse virtual audience. Abby Smith wrote “Library Collections Online,” which contrasts the nature of a digital item and physical items in a library's collection and discusses of impact of digital collections on libraries. Bernard Reilly's paper, “Museum Collections Online,” reviews what factors come into play when museums make decisions about digital display.

The agenda was planned for a day and a half, to accommodate the busy schedules of the invitees. It included formal discussions of each of the papers and opportunities for informal exchanges during a reception, lunch, and a tour. The sessions were not tape recorded in the hopes that the small group of thirty would speak openly and candidly. The published report includes a summary of the conference discussions about the commissioned papers.

From the physical to the digital: A Paradigm Shift
“The World Wide Web presents libraries, archives and museums a whole new set of challenges for which there is no traditional solution,” says Abby Smith. Highest on the list of concerns seemed to be intellectual property rights, the cost of digitization, and the preservation of digital assets. Perspectives at times sharply diverged between museums and libraries, and sometimes between different types of museums and different types of libraries.

One area approached differently by libraries and museums was the issue of selecting collections for digitization. Libraries aim at offering access to their collections in their entirety, providing the digitized item with no interpretation-or mediation-attached. The value libraries add is in the organization of materials and the access provided for the researcher. Libraries focus on enhancing research. Conference participant Heike Kordish, Deputy Director of the New York Public Library's Research Libraries, says, “We are only just beginning to learn what it means to try and do research in this fashion. There is the question of standards. There is cross collection searching and interoperability that needs to be built in. Our interest is not just to put up a lot of wallpaper, but to build research tools that people can use.”

Museums, on the other hand, tend to thoughtfully select items from their holdings for online presentation to the public, just as they select items for display in exhibitions. They attract visitors to their Web sites through online exhibits that provide context and meaning to objects in their collections. Patterson Sims, Deputy Director of Education and Research Support for The Museum of Modern Art, notes, “The conference made clear to me that the Web can be used in different ways. I was impressed by how technology enables mediation [of online collections]. Just the presentation of the data is not the fundamental goal. The human use of the data means there needs to be some system of logic for you to access it, for making a connection to it. We're not aiming at putting an exhaustive collection online, but we are looking into what it means to make it meaningful.”

Some aspects of the museums' and libraries' approach to collections were seen as converging by conference participants, however. Doralynn Pines, Associate Director of Administration for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has in depth knowledge of both museum and library worlds, having spent sixteen years as chief librarian of the museum's Thomas J. Watson Research Library. She stresses that the Met recognizes the value of complete online collections. She says, “We are putting every single European painting online,” and adds, “Putting the entire collection of the museum online is our goal, but it won't happen in my lifetime.” She also remarks that, “Many libraries are focusing on putting up special collections.”

The New York Public Library, which has recently completed a strategic planning process for its Web site development, will be adding to its Web site more of its unique primary source material, according to Kordish. She says, “We are adding 600,000 images of antique maps and mediaeval and renaissance manuscripts to our site, and this is very much a part of our current direction.” In addition, she notes, “The technology allows us to look at partnerships to repurpose materials in ways we never imagined. For example, we are putting up a collection of early American landscape and cityscape prints. A curator at Yale University has already said he'd like access to that for his art history course. There's going to be a lot of cross fertilization here.”

On the World Wide Web, objects from one institution can be seamlessly linked to the Web pages of another. Participant Francis Blouin, Director of the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan, is concerned about what happens when an object comes out of its institutional context. He says, “What are we to our users if we are not tied to the object. Our institutions bring a certain kind of expertise in delineating the boundaries of information. When you remove images from institutional context, does the institution lose its value?”

This issue of contextualization frames a valid point, especially considering that an institution like The Museum of Modern Art receives more virtual visitors a year (about 2.5 million) than actual visitors (about 1.5 million). Says Sims, “We are becoming much more widely visited in the electronic mode of our Web site than in the real world experience of our galleries.”

Conference Outcomes
In the coming years questions of copyright, preservation, setting up external sources of support, and changing functions, wrought by the ever more prevalent World Wide Web will continue to weigh on the leaders of libraries and museums. Collections, Content, and the Web, and other meetings that bring together museum and library leaders, will bring cultural institutions closer to solutions.

Francis Blouin, notes, “The value [of the conference] was in the convergence of museums, libraries and archives in seeing the Web as a supplement to what we do. It enhances the way we do outreach, provide access, and preserve our collections. I've never before sat around a table with a group that included museum directors, archivists, and librarians. We came to the realization that we have a common world.”

CLIR extended the impact of the meeting by drawing up action items from the conference and printing them, together with the commissioned papers. The publication, Collections, Content, and the Web, was published in January 2000. CLIR mailed it to 1,200 libraries, the members of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and a select list of museums of the American Association of Museums. The publication can also be ordered or downloaded from the CLIR Web site, where it has become the most requested publication. Smith says that the interest - especially from small museums - has been surprising.

Based on the positive feedback, Smith is certain that the conference hit a nerve. CLIR and the Chicago Historical Society continue to seek common solutions to the challenges facing museums and libraries, and they encourage others to join in the conversation.

Vital Statistics:
Grant:	1998 National Leadership Grant for Library-Museum Collaboration, $72,900
Grant Partners:	Council on Library and Information Resources Chicago Historical Society
Conference Participants:	30 museum and library leaders
Dates and Venue:	October 5-7, 1999 Chicago Historical Society
Publication:	Collections, Content and the Web Available at http://www.clir.org in PDF or HTML or to order print copy
Contacts:	Abby Smith, Director of Programs Council on Library and Information Resources 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20036-2124 202-939-4750 asmith@clir.org http://www.clir.org Bernard Reilly Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, IL 60614-6099 312-642-4600 reilly@chicagohistory.org http://www.chicagohs.org

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