List Of Topics For Visits

Section a: introduction

1. General description of the institution/activity

• What is its background, history and objectives?
• How is it organised, managed and financed?
• How large is the institution?

2. Collections and Materials

• What types of collections, materials and objects are managed by the institution?
• How are the collections and objects organised, stored and presented?
• Who owns, sells and buys the objects and their copyrights?
• Who holds copyright on object documentation?

Section b:

3. Information Technology

• What kinds of Information Technology does the institution utilise?
• How does the institution manage, operate and finance its IT resources?
• What kinds of IT resources (e.g. collections databases, machine readable files, scanned images, multimedia presentations, Web pages etc.) are available, planned or hoped for?
• What are the experiences in relation to utilising IT for management or publication of the collections?
• What internal or cooperative IT projects does the institution participate in - or plan for?
• What are the future plans and expectations for IT applications?



Section c: Use of standards




4. How important do you see the standards process to be, and
in which particular areas is it most important (core base
content vs. overall multimedia architecture)?

5. How good is the liaison between the standards bodies and
your community ? How could this process be improved (and
should it be improved)?




Section d: Market




6. CHIO: what is regarded as 'market' or use outside direct
circle of institute?

7. How applicable are modern media when compared to classic
media, regarding this market?




Section e: transfer of information




8. Issues for information service: security, IPR policy and
mechanisms, payment, bandwidth, cost of access, need for and
use of standards.

9. Bulk transfer requirements and methods.





Section f: Digital images and data / Multimedia




10. How much of a need exists to re-use multimedia material: -
within the organisation; - for third party organisations?

11. Is the current state of the art in multimedia technology
seen as adequate? In particular, is the Web browser effective
for communicating multimedia cultural heritage information?

12. How does your organisation take 'quality' decisions when
capturing multimedia information? How regularly is this
decision process updated?

13. What volumes of information do you hold in digitised form
(now and planned for the coming 2 to 10 years)?