Digital Resources from Cultural Institutions for Use in Teaching and Learning: A Report of the American/German Workshop. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110936179, 9783598116957

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
FIRST DAY
Opening
Introduction to the Workshop: Rich Cultural Heritage and its Transformation to Digital
Introduction to the State Museums of Berlin
Introduction to the Berlin State Library
Introduction to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
An Overview of the ARTstor Project: ARTstor: a digital library for the history of art
Island situation? Some observations on the work in museums as it affects digitisation efforts
Bridges or continents as models for upcoming digitisation strategies?
CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS: Projects of Digital Art History
Digital Art History: the situation at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München
Summary of the Discussion of the First Day
Presentation of the virtual 3-D model of the Museum Island and of the CD-ROM “Kidai Shoran”
SECOND DAY
Two Union Catalogues of Art, Architecture and Medieval Manuscripts in Germany
Humboldt’s Virtual Wunderkammer
The Internet Portal “Euromuse” – a Network of European Art Museums
Museum Documentation System of the State Museums Berlin
Concluding Discussion: Common Perspectives in the Future?
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Citation preview

Digital Resources from Cultural Institutions for Use in Teaching and Learning

Digital Resources from Cultural Institutions for Use in Teaching and Learning A Report of the American/German Workshop The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

Editor: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann Co-Editors: Axel Ermert, Monika Hagedorn-Saupe, Max Marmor

Κ · G · Saur München 2004

Bibliografische Information Der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar.

Θ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier

© 2004 by Κ. G. Saur Verlag GmbH, München Printed in Germany Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk ist in allen seinen Teilen urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung in und Verarbeitung durch elektronische Systeme. Satz: Dr. Rainer Ostermann, München Druck/Bindung: Strauss GmbH, Mörlenbach ISBN 3-598-11695-0

Contents Preface

7

First Day Klaus-Dieter Lehmann Opening

9

Klaus-Dieter Lehmann Introduction to the Workshop: Rich Cultural Heritage and its Transformation to Digital

11

Peter-Klaus Schuster Introduction to the State Museums of Berlin

15

Graham Jefcoate Introduction to the Berlin State Library

19

James Shulman Introduction to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

23

James Shulman An Overview of the ARTstor project: ARTstor: a digital library for the history of art

25

Island situation? Some observations on the work in museums as it affects digitisation efforts

33

Bridges or continents as models for upcoming digitisation strategies ? . .

36

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee Haffner CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS: Projects of Digital Art History

37

Hubertus Kohle Digital Art History: the situation at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München 51 Klaus-Dieter Lehmann Summary of the Discussion of the First Day

65

Joachim Sauter Presentation of the virtual 3-D model of the Museum Island and of the CD-ROM "Kidai Shoran"

67

CONTENTS

Second Day Lutz Heusinger Two Union Catalogues of Art, Architecture and Medieval Manuscripts in Germany

75

Jochen Brüning Humboldts Virtual Wunderkammer

87

Günther Schauerte /Monika

Hagedorn-Saupe

The Internet Portal "Euromuse" - a Network of European Art Museums .

99

Günther Schauerte / Monika Hagedorn-Saupe Museum Documentation System of the State Museums Berlin

103

Concluding Discussion: Common Perspectives in the Future ?

107

List of Participants

113

6

Preface The Foundation Prussian Heritage and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have jointly held a Workshop on 2/3 July 2002 in Berlin. Its theme was the creation and use of digital collections from libraries, museums and archives, with education and academic studies forming a particular target segment of user groups. The participants were experts from scholarly and cultural institutions, specialists in information technology and representatives from cultural management, both from the USA and Germany. The aim of the Workshop was to document the current state of affairs in both countries on the basis of concrete implementations, to describe both the subject basis and the technical basis of such implementations, and to provide recommendations concerning further development. From the topical point of view, art history and architecture shared the focus, from the institutional point of view collections of universities and libraries, from the organizational point of view virtual museums and inventories. The presentations referred to already existing systems, for some of which further development is foreseen. Scholarly research is particularly dependent on cultural heritage in its full breadth and depth. Digital media have, over the last few years, developed into very impressive tools to serve the goal of rendering the cultural heritage available for scholarly purposes. This becomes apparent from some typical figures: From 1990-1999, the number of web sites increased from 1 mio. to 60 mio. Every day, 1 mio. new pages are added to the web. 400 mio. people worldwide have access to the internet. Even though most of the data transfer occasioned by such developments may serve communication rather than publication and scholarly information, it clearly must be recognized that the internet is establishing itself more and more as a scholarly medium. Scholarship and research have always employed the most current information methods. This development is, not least, strongly fostered by the fact that practically all information produced these days in scholarship is available in digital form. Digital and digitised objects require much more active handling and administration than analogue ones. This is not only a consequence of rapid technological change e.g., in coding and in formats - techniques of conversion, 7

PREFACE

migration and emulation are at hand meanwhile to cope with such change but also of the new problems in the areas of authentication, referrability, and digital rights management. These new developments and new possibilities each require the cooperation of the following sectors; only in this way, can scholarship and cultural heritage interact in future: 1. Continuing development through research 2. Transmission through knowledge and teaching 3. Dissemination of knowledge through publishing 4. Preservation of knowledge in and through the collections of archives, museums and libraries. The Workshop has especially focused on these interrelations. I should like to direct my thanks to The Andrew W . Mellon Foundation for their support, and to the participants for their active and creative collaboration. Prof. Dr. h.c. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann President Foundation Prussian Heritage

8

FIRST DAY

Klaus-Dieter

Lehmann

Opening Klaus-Dieter Lehmann opens the Workshop and welcomes all participants, thanking especially the American colleagues for undertaking a long and exhausting trip to Europe for a mutual exchange on questions of digitisation of the cultural heritage. It is very obvious now for all who work in this area that they are dealing with the same subject: how to transfer the rich collections of the cultural heritage into new media, image databases, etc. as part of the response to the emerging image/text culture. Researchers now tend, as they always have, to look out for, and to use, the newest and most developed media. For the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) as one of the largest cultural heritage complexes in Europe this is particularly relevant. It also became obvious, when Klaus-Dieter Lehmann had joined the discussions held in New York early 2002, that the players in this particular field should share experience and knowledge so as to attain goals jointly rather than independently. Thus, a set of shared recommendations and ideas would be the best outcome that could be desired by the end of this Workshop. In the following, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann gives a short introduction to the main aspects of the Workshop and to the specific information infrastructure of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. 9

Klaus-Dieter

Lehmann

Introduction to the Workshop: Rich Cultural Heritage and its Transformation to Digital The situation in libraries, archives and museums today reflects a number of profound changes. It is shaped largely by organised simultaneity, media transience and constant acceleration. The most characteristic features of this "acceleration on history" are not permanence, linearity and continuity but rapid change. The unity of historical time has broken apart. Time, however, as the philosopher Henri Bergson points out, can pass only against the background of what endures, or to quote Eduard Herriot: Culture is what remains when everything else is forgotten. Four major developments can be noted that favour momentary memory as opposed to collective memory: -

-

-

globalization accompanied by world-wide networking and opportunities for communication that generate a flood of images and information - entirely independent of place and time; media transience, which fosters simultaneity, interactivity and openness to anything and everything but cannot communicate permanence, public openness and selectivity; the disappearance of a shared canon of cultural and intellectual heritage, the body of literature and art from which collective memory draws its identity; the unmistakable tendency to favour economic rather than cultural perspectives. Everything found incapable of surviving the competitive crunch, everything lacking in economic rationale, is at risk of being relegated to a position of social insignificance.

One constellation that offers promise for the future in this context is based on approaches that relate the sources of the cultural heritage effectively to one another, rather than isolating them on the basis of differences in content and material form as found in archives and museums. Their configuration as a cultural ensemble generates new knowledge for the cultural sciences and enhances the attractiveness of cultural institutions. In dividing them into autonomous categories, we overlook the fact that collections in libraries, archives and museums are primarily organisational demarcation lines imposed upon a coherent complex of cultural and artistic achievement. Only when 11

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKSHOP

linked together can the parallel institutions generate new associations, insights and options. Today's information and communication technology is well suited to the task of exploiting the benefits of this interplay. As the current President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Foundation Prussian Cultural Heritage), Klaus-Dieter Lehmann recognizes the opportunity to set such a process in motion as a model at the Stiftung. The Preußischer Kulturbesitz has a highly unique character as the organisational umbrella which unites many types of cultural institutions. With 16 museums, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (State Library), the Geheimes Staatsarchiv (Prussian State Archives) and a number of research institutes, the 'Preußenstiftung' is an unparalleled cosmos of culture. The treasures of the world's cultures, which represent more than 6. 000 years of human history, are gathered here in a rich and complex cultural memory. This memory reflects and presents both the consistency and the transience of historical developments. It provides keys to an understanding of the world, less as guidelines for action than as avenues to the experience of paradoxes. The cultural wealth of the Stiftung obliges it not only to preserve this heritage conscientiously but also to ensure user-oriented access and presentation through the application of modern information resources. Now that business procedures have been automated and Internet capability has been established for most departments of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, an efficient information infrastructure is to be developed and expanded for the museums of the Foundation from the year 2001 on. A networked object database and a metadatabase, designed in accordance with international standards for communication, memory and description, will ensure online access to objects in the collections of the museums of archaeology, ethnology and art on the Internet. The museum information systems currently in place at the museums will be replaced in a step-by-step process. Emphasis will be placed from the outset on ensuring that the IT-systems installed at the State Library, the museums and the archives can be interconnected. Both the academic and the business communities will benefit substantially from this functional merger. The Bildarchiv (Image Archives), which is administered by the Foundation itself, will assume the function of managing the systematic exploitation of resources for all institutions on behalf of the Foundation. Care will be taken to ensure that the provision of materials for research and education is governed by the principle of partnership, rather than profit maximisation. Cultural institutions must remain resources for science and scholarship in the future as 12

Klaus-Dieter

Lehmann

well. It will be important to distinguish between commercial use and personal or scholarly use. It is apparent that these digital offerings are intended to meet changing information requirements as well as educational and research needs. Scientists and scholars will always seek to benefit from the most modern information resources available. Thus, a dramatic increase in the digitisation of analogue collections can now be observed. And the products of this process are not merely advanced forms of copies but also present new knowledge complexes, dynamic and interactive combinations, hyperlinks and multimedia objects. Today, users of library and museum materials not only expect access to an increasingly larger part of the cultural heritage in digital form but also demand that comparative, multifunctional and interdisciplinary aspects be made available. The old static models long used in the three professions are being replaced by dynamic ones. But these fundamental opportunities for development must be planned with great care if the Internet is to be more than just a cluster of separate websites. Therefore, libraries, archives and museums should waste no time, identify areas of application of mutual interest, and seek appropriate project funding. The joint planning process should involve not only representatives of the cultural institutions themselves but technical and organisational specialists and users as well. The question to be faced for the future is not whether, but how libraries, archives and museums can help assure quality, preserve pluralistic structures in program offerings and guarantee access to information and knowledge. The future will belong to a multiplicity of media. The key to success will be the ability to couple the benefits of the digital medium with the standards that have traditionally enabled us to participate in the cultural memory in its purely material manifestations.

13

Peter-Klaus

Schuster

Introduction to the State Museums of Berlin Peter-Klaus Schuster introduces the State Museums of Berlin (a total number of 16 institutions) which today, together with the former Prussian State Library, the Prussian State Archives and two smaller research institutions, form the "Foundation Prussian Heritage" (SPK). While a glance out of the windows of the Conference Room allows one to catch a glimpse of some of these 16 museums which nowadays belong to the Foundation, as well as of one (the more modem) building of the State Library, the original core of the "Royal Museums of Berlin" is actually situated on, and nearby, the "museum island" of Berlin. This is a real island, between the two arms of the river Spree that cut through Berlin, very close to the former Berlin City Castle of the Prussian Kings (Stadtschloß) which is now defunct: the remains of what was left after the destructions of World War II have been blown up in 1952, in the Eastern Sector of Berlin. After it had been decided that the collections of the Prussian Kings should be made accessible to the public, a museum (later called "The Old Museum") was erected by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and opened in 1830, near the location (an actual island) which soon became called the "museum island": This is because soon afterwards, on this island the construction of further buildings was started (the "New Museum", opened in 1855; the Picture Gallery, opened 1876; and the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum - now called Bode-Museum after its Director around the turn of the last century - , opened 1904), carrying on until 1930 when the last of the, in total, 5 museum buildings housed on the island (the Pergamon Museum, erection started 1909) was opened. So, what can be seen in Berlin and what is home to the museum activities at the Foundation is not, as could mistakenly be assumed, "the national museums of Germany" but the 'remnants' of Prussia in terms of culture, the State of Prussia having officially been dissolved in 1947. Nevertheless, the Foundation is the biggest cultural complex in Germany and the State Museums within it are probably the biggest single museum complex in Germany. For these treasures, after the dissolution of Prussia in 1947, a new administrative construction had to be found, and the Foundation (est. 1957) was the answer to this challenge. Much as the State Museums Berlin are also a virtual community today since they spread over 4 different locations all in all - , they started not only 15

INTRODUCTION T O THE STATE MUSEUMS OF BERLIN

by being situated on a physical island but also represented an 'island of culture', a self-contained collection of rich variety, of precious objects brought together over time by the Prussian monarchy and its predecessors. In this capacity, they developed from an initially modest collection into an overwhelming wealth for scientific and scholarly study and also a tool for the education of the citizenry, only too well suited to satisfy their continuously growing desire to take part in cultural life - a desire for knowledge and aesthetic connoisseurship, inspiration, judgement, and pleasure. This is the original reason why the present-day State Museums of Berlin are scholar museums and scholarly museums in their very nature. When the 'Old Museum' was opened in 1830, the tendency (its origin dating back to the French revolution of 1789) had already been in place for some time, which re-considered art as the medium to attain the freedom of mankind, art as a new religion and one of a completely changed character. In their development in the 19th century, paying tribute to their then contemporary century, the Berlin museums grew into the role of 'temples of positivism', that is to say, in line with the enormously growing importance of science and of 'positive' knowledge created through it, they accumulated numerous objects important to such scientific study and serving as evidence of positive knowledge, more and more spanning the entire earth. A final aspect to mention is the role of art as 'nation': encompassing all segments and classes of society and all its various activities. This was a function newly defined and ascribed to the arts, from which grew, as a consequence, the demand that the state should look actively also after the contemporary, modern art in its time and should contribute to fostering and supporting it. Wilhelm Bode, the then Director of the museums, actively played this part in the late 19th century, buying many of the new oeuvres, and this necessitated the erection of the 4th building on the museum island. This, in turn, caused the non-European collections to be relocated, away from the museums island, to the quiet, elegant South-Western Berlin suburb "Dahlem". The developments after World War II culminated in the separation of the Eastern and Western part of Berlin, most of the masterpieces of European art remaining in the West where they had been kept (partially for reasons of safeguarding against the war-time activities in the inner city of Berlin), whereas the collections of classical antiquity (including the famous huge, largely nonmovable ensemble of the Pergamon Altar) mostly remained in the East. The ethnological collections found themselves divided between both locations. 16

Peter-Klaus

Schuster

A new development occured in the 1970s in that the main museum location of West-Berlin in the district of Dahlem - hosting ethnological collections as well as, e.g., the Picture Gallery - slowly became overcrowded. Plans had to be made for additional location and space, and the overall design of the "Kulturforum" (Cultural Forum) arose, on the premises of which this Workshop takes place. The building to host those collections of the former Prussian State Library which after the divide of Germany had found themselves in the West was erected first in this space. New buildings to provide museum space came later; now the area is completed and finds itself directly adjacent to the most modern architecture, the one which makes the new Potsdamer Platz (this latter has completely changed its face since the fall of the wall). The developments which had occured during the divide of Germany, of course, posed great challenges for the museums seeking to re-unify the collections (and the museums themselves, some of them having had a 'double existence' in East and West of two separate institutions each until 1989), but this work has by now been successfully concluded. The latest issue is that, in the centre of Berlin and very close to the museum island, the "Schloßplatz" (Place of the Castle) which had housed the former castle now is expected to feature a completely new design: after several years of assessment and discussion, there are now plans to tear down the "Palace of the Republic" which had been erected on the ground of the former Castle, and to rebuild, to some extent, that castle. If these plans materialize, it is foreseen that culture - the museums of non-European culture, possibly a city library, and possibly other structures - would find its home in this new building. Having summed up this historical development, it must be stressed that the wealth and variety of the Prussian collections in Berlin have, from an early stage, represented a true notion of "World Culture". This very concept is at the heart of German culture of the late 18th century, of the great philosophy, of the new movement of art as a true religion, and was perhaps best and immortally expressed by Goethe, as a rich, gratifying, never-ending source of inspiration and education. The breadth of the approach for collecting and the interconnection between the museum objects and other cultural manifestations having a relation to them (such as literary oeuvres) in the State Museums Berlin may well be taken as evidence of the realization and the living spirit of that idea of "World Culture": The museum collections extending from classical paintings through medieval objects, from etchings to precious arts and crafts, from Egyptian papyri through the sculpture of classical antiquity, 17

INTRODUCTION T O THE STATE MUSEUMS OF BERLIN

from European musical instruments to the world-wide perspective incorporated in a large variety of ethnological objects from all over the world. This wide range makes the collections really live up to Goethe's definition of "World Culture", truly cosmolipolitan and ever mutually inspiring sources of research and ongoing cultural study. Indeed, what could give more mutual inspiration, and foster the interdisciplinarity in the activities of the participating institutions and, more generally, in the research which is conducted on the basis of the collections, than the most sophisticated interrelations between a large library and the museums, an archive and specialized research institutions - as well as a large picture archive/library ("Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz") which also belongs to the Foundation and, interesting enough, is not strictly a service outlet of the museums but is administratively subordniate to the State Library - all these being united under the common roof of a unique cultural institution ? Where a large Art Library ("Kunstbibliothek") is just across the street from the State Library with its enormous holdings? It is clearly the mission for the State Museums of Berlin in the near future to improve this potential and all the services, using all instruments of modern technology, in order to make the World Culture in the Berlin collections a possession of as many people as possible. The way to achieve such goal is that of ever improving access to the collections, creating additional value through cross-linking and by strengthening, to the utmost extent, all the fine interconnecting links and conduits running between them.

18

Graham Jefcoate

Introduction to the Berlin State Library Graham Jefcoate introduces the Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz)1 which is one of Germany's richest resources for scholarship, research and information. The Library's collections are universal in their scope, covering all subjects and cultures, although the nearly ten million volumes and 38.000 current periodicals are especially strong in the humanities. Of particular importance are the Library's holdings of historic and special materials, including some three million books and periodicals printed before 1945, 18.300 early Western manuscripts, 318.000 autograph papers, 41.000 oriental manuscripts, 66.000 music manuscripts and 950.000 maps. The Library's acquisitions budget in 2002 was 8,5m Euros, over one million of which was provided through the generous support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council, DFG). In 2002, over 35.000 people were registered as active users of the Library, recording 1,2 million visits, an increase of 3,4% in comparison with 2001. The Library, which was founded by the Great Elector of Brandenburg in 1661, became the Prussian Royal Library ("Königliche Bibliothek") in 1701. After the foundation of the united German Reich in 1871, the Library expanded to rival the national libraries in London, Paris and Washington, D.C. From 1918 to 1945 it was known as the Prussian State Library ("Preußische Staatsbibliothek"). After the Second World War, the Library and its collections were divided between East and West Berlin, with much valuable material retained in Poland and Russia. The Library was reunited as the "Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin" under the umbrella of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) in 1992. The Library currently operates from two main sites in the centre of Berlin, on Unter den Linden and in the Kulturforum, Potsdamer Straße; a third site, currently at an early planning stage, will provide additional storage space for the growing collections. Following a period in which the physical reunification of the collections after the end of the Cold War was foremost in the Library's thinking, the Berlin State Library is currently undergoing a process of re-evaluation and renewal. Strategic aims for the next few years include the completion of a major building project at Unter den Linden to replace the reading room '

http://Staatsbibliothek-Berlin.de/.

19

INTRODUCTION TO THE BERLIN STATE LIBRARY

(destroyed by bombing in World War II) and to renovate the entire site; the development of national and international library partnerships and collaboration; and the expansion of electronic services. As with all its partner institutions among international research libraries, the Berlin State Library is faced with the challenge of the emerging "hybrid library", in which materials in both analogue and digital formats will need to be acquired, made available for use, and preserved in the long term. It is a strategic priority for the Berlin State Library to improve access to its collections through online descriptions and machine-readable records of its holdings, where appropriate in the context of nationally or internationally distributed resources, for example union catalogues or collaborative databases. Since 1999, the Library's bibliographic records have been created online through the "Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund" (GBV, Common Library Network) using the PICA bibliographic system. Holdings are made available in "StabiKat", the Library's online public access catalogue (OPAC). 2 Apart from current catalogue records covering monographs and special materials, StabiKat also contains retroconverted records, some 6,6 million items or about 65% of the total. In 2002, a major project was launched to convert to machinereadable form a further 1,15 million records for items acquired up to 1909. The Library also plays an important national role in describing and providing access to special materials. The "Zentralkartei der Autographen" (Union Catalogue of Autograph Papers), which has been based at the Library since 1966, has been available online in "Kalliope" since April 2002. 3 Records for over 500.000 manuscript letters and papers in more than 150 German libraries, archives and museums have been made available to date; with the support of the DFG, a further 500.000 will be added in the course of the current year (2003). It is the Library's intention to develop Kalliope as a specialist portal, providing access to it for further databases and online services from libraries, archives and museums. Records from Kalliope are also available through "Malvine" (Manuscripts and Letters via Integrated Networks in Europe), for the development of which the Library received support from the EU. 4 Since 2001, the EU-funded project "Leaf' (Linking and Exploring Authority Files) 5 has been working towards an integrated solution to the problem of international authority files. 2 3 4

20

http://stabikat.Staatsbibliothek-berlin.de. http://kalliope.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/. www.malvine.org.

Graham Jefcoate The SBB maintains and develops, in many cases with the support of the DFG, a wide range of further online catalogues and databases providing access to special materials. The "Zeitschriftendatenbank" (ZDB, the National Serials Database) 6 is an online union catalogue of serial holdings in German libraries. The "IKAR-Altkartendatenbank" (Early Maps Database) 7 is an online union catalogue of cartographic materials to 1850; it currently holds records for over 223.000 items. "Manuscripta mediaevalia" 8 provides online access to some 30.000 manuscripts in mostly German collections, whereas the "Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts (VD17, the German 17th Century Short Title Catalogue) 9 currently holds records for nearly 200.000 bibliographic items, many enhanced online by digital images of bibliographically significant pages. An online version of the "Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke" (Catalogue of Incunabula) and a database of historic bindings are currently under development. 10 The Library plans to develop online portals to cover many of the specialist subject areas for which it holds a national responsibility in the distributed German library system. The Library is currently (2003) in the process of developing a concept for the retrospective digitisation of key holdings, inter alia as the basis for acquisition of a content management system (CMS). Among early digitisation projects have been the online presentations of music manuscripts of J. S. Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony." The "Digitales TurfanArchiv", a collection of material from Turfan, an ancient culture on the Silk Road, is being made available online by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences) with the support of the SBB. 12 In August 2003, to mark the presence of the international library congress IFLA in Berlin, the Library will present "Ex bibliotheca regia berolinensi", a multi-media display of rare and early printed books which will also be accessible online and as a CD-ROM.

5 6 7

8 9

10 11 12

www.leaf-eu.org. http://www.zeitschriftendatenbank.de. http://ikar.sbb.spk-berlin.de.

http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de. http://www.vdl7.de. VD17 is a collaborative project realised through a consortium led by the Bavarian State Library. http://www.hist-einband.de. http://beethoven.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/. http://www.bbaw.de/forschung/turfanforschung/index.html.

21

James

Shulman

Introduction to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation James Shulman congratulates Peter-Klaus Schuster and, equally, Graham Jefcoate, on the truly challenging task that rests on their shoulders. There is a fascinating spatial situation as well as an unbelievably rich treasure incorporated in what the Berliners call "The Museum Island". The wonderfully apt metaphor of a "museum island" also gives rise to a different observation in that the work and the situation of not a small number of present-day museums in the U.S. evoke an impression of "islands", too, in many a contemporary observer. James Shulman goes on to state that he is very happy to hear the introductory words to this Workshop since they point exactly to the problems the North-American discussion is entering into, and the contact between museums, libraries and faculty members is vital for this process. Broadening of access to digital collections is a key issue for the near term. There are still too many things at present which in the view of many users "are not working". And this is precisely the reason why the Mellon Foundation embarks on such complicated challenges as cooperative projects for digitisation. The entire Foundation works in a financial framework of 4.000.000.000 USD, with 180-200 mio spent each year to cultural institutions. Digitisation has only recently been added to the work programme, and the project ARTstor is merely one element of that activity. The whole activity is still in its very early days. To summarise: The interest clearly lies in finding out how all parties concerned (of which the participants of the Workshop do represent not a small share) can work together, and the Mellon Foundation particularly underlines its own two-fold aim: -

to serve the researchers and the general public through research and development aid in the cultural sector to learn firsthand how digitisation of cultural objects can best support the needs of scholars, teachers and students

The Mellon Foundation already has an established tradition of working with cultural institutions, museums and libraries. It is now the aim to build a larger service in this area, namely ARTstor. Some of the projects to be presented at this meeting thus will be highly interesting in the light of the aims set out. 23

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANDREW W . MELLON FOUNDATION

Working with those who manage cultural collections is the key issue in the present digitisation initiatives. In the universities themselves, the branches dealing with digital images are themselves 'islands' within the entire campus.

24

James Shulman

An Overview of the ARTstor Project: ARTstor: a digital library for the history of art ARTstor (http://www.ARTstor.org) is a digital initiative initiated in April 2001 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (http://www.mellon.org/). The Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic institution, primarily dedicated to supporting education and the arts; its two primary constituencies are institutions of higher education, and cultural institutions (especially museums). By virtue of its long-standing commitment to these two sectors - a commitment that reflects the charitable interests of the Mellon family - the Foundation seems especially well-suited to identify and advance shared interests in the creation and use of digital resources in the arts. ARTstor will license access to its digital library on a non-profit basis beginning perhaps in 2004. These licenses will foster the use of digital images in educational and scholarly work while also requiring licensees to agree to a defined range of non-commercial uses. ARTstor's name is intended to allude to the project's principal domain - the arts - as well as its kinship with a previous digital library initiative launched by the Mellon Foundation, JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org). Like JSTOR, which creates, 'stores' and distributes digital versions of the complete backfiles of core journals in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, ARTstor will create (or assemble), 'store' and distribute digital images of visual materials. Again like JSTOR, ARTstor seeks, in performing these services, to advance and progressively transform the ways in which scholarship, teaching and learning are conducted. The audience of both initiatives is strictly noncommercial and educational and, like JSTOR, ARTstor anticipates functioning as an independent non-profit - and mission-driven - organization. As it began to explore this complex territory, The Mellon Foundation has supported a range of digital imaging projects. These have included a project to digitize the 6.200 objects in the Museum of Modern Art's (MOMA) rich, but only partially accessible, design and architecture collection. This project provided an instructive opportunity to assess the value, and the cost, of digitizing museum collections at high resolution; the variety of production strategies available for doing so, ranging from direct digital capture to scanning photographic intermediary media; the opportunities and challenges posed by 25

AN OVERVIEW OF THE ARTSTOR PROJECT

Fig. 1: ARTstor - Homepage. (November 2002; www.artstor.org)

rich museum metadata; and the complex and variable needs of potential end users. The project has also offered a sustained opportunity to enhance our understanding of the software tools scholars most need in order to work effectively with digital images of cultural materials. Simultaneously, the Foundation began funding an important international effort, led by a team Df scholars at Northwestern University, to digitize progressively and over many years - the treasure trove of cultural materials associated with the famous Buddhist cave shrines at the Dunhuang oasis site, a key cultural crossroads of the ancient Silk Route, in the Gobi Desert. In the first instance, high-resolution digital versions of the interior decoration of the cave shrines are being created, offering visual access to wall paintings and sculptures, many of which are extremely difficult to see even in situ. These rich forms of digital documentation are being 'stitched' together to create digital "virtual reality" re-creations of the shrine interiors. The Mellon International Dunhuang Archive will unite these images from the caves with a range of other materials - sacred and secular texts, textiles, etc. - formerly located at Dunhuang but removed from the site at the beginning of the 20 th century and now preserved in the collections of an international group of archives, libraries, and museums, among them the British Library, British Museum, the Musée Guimet and the Bibliothèque Nationale. ARTstor staff are keenly interested in ways of employing rich media in support of the study of monuments to which still images cannot do full justice. The MOMA Digital Design Collection and the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive may now be regarded as defining one end of the spectrum of 26

James Shulman ARTstor's charter collections: specialized digital collections derived, frequently via direct digital capture, from primary sources, whether found at remote archeological sites or in archives, libraries and museums. In addition to being based on primary sources, these collections have several features in common: they will primarily support the scholarship and teaching of a relatively circumscribed but important international audience of subject specialists; they embody a rare opportunity to measure the impact of digital image technologies on advanced scholarship and to test new forms of scholarly communication; they feature rich, complex, discipline-based metadata posing significant challenges from a standards perspective.

A R Τ S Τ O R

THE ARTSTOR IMAGE GALLERY MoMA Diijttal Design Collection

Ail S TOR Oe*erip»we 'Jcfiein«

FriedrichstMssK SkyiuapBi, Piujcct. Oi.flifi Mttte, Ctfimiiiy. Pia spectiyp mew frotn •

H

Ξ^

Ctmccul iikI pencil on tracing piper mounted on boafd

ι nf 1 p a p ? ;k to sltrtfatQt. ticfMt

imdijB 1 - 33 of 33 «IÇVtov)ev/lm»et. s f ^ j & b t · i l t i f r i

Fig. 2: Screenshot of "The ARTstor Image Gallery". (January 2003)

At the other pole of the ARTstor charter collection spectrum will be a broad "image gallery." Drawing on multiple sources, this image gallery is meant to be the digital equivalent of a large academic slide library and, like the latter, it should support a wide range of teaching needs as well as research and scholarship. It will offer a broad compendium of images, perhaps 300.000 in 27

A N OVERVIEW OF THE A R T S T O R PROJECT

the relatively near term, crafted around common, undergraduate-level teaching needs in art history and related disciplines. Initially, the ARTstor image gallery will draw substantially upon a digital version of the slide library of a single university. A supplementary source of the image gallery in its first iteration is the collection of more than 4.200 core images of American art and architecture originally assembled for the much-admired Carnegie Study of the Arts of the United States in the early 1960s. That canonic collection has now been digitized from the original, archival set of 4"x5" color negatives. Another initial component of the image gallery will be the approximately 4.000 images assembled by the Digital Library Federation in support of the Academic Image Cooperative project (http://www.diglib.org/about/aic.htm) - a collection defined on the basis of an overlap concordance of ten of the most frequently used art history survey texts, and thus offering support for widely taught, heavily-subscribed introductory courses in the history of art. This image gallery aspires to do several things. Being shaped around common art history curricula, it should relieve many colleges and universities of the need to digitize their own slide collections in support of the essential image needs of art history teachers. This activity is performed redundantly in the U.S. and in Europe. One of the Mellon Foundation's basic goals is to alleviate such unproductive redundancies in higher education, and that goal should be strongly advanced by the wide distribution of the ARTstor image gallery. At the same time, the image gallery is intended to be of real value to a wide range of individuals and institutions, from students and teachers in (perhaps) secondary as well as post-secondary schools that have no significant slide resources, let alone digital collections, to research universities and museums with rich institutional image collections. It should significantly support teaching needs all across this terrain, including the classroom presentation of digital images, the provision of course-based 'image reserves' for student study, the educational outreach programs of museums and, potentially, remedial, lifelong learning and distance education programs. At other points along the ARTstor charter collection spectrum, users will find a range of collections that promise to support both the research and teaching of specialists and the more general scholarly and teaching interests of art historians and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences: An Asian art survey collection will initially offer approximately 15.000 images derived, in large part, from the important photographic archive of 28

James Shulman John and Susan Huntington at Ohio State University, authorities in the field of Buddhist iconography and the art of the Indian subcontinent, Nepal, and Tibet, and supplemented by related resources. This collection is intended to help support survey courses in the art of Asia as well as scholarship in the art of India and Buddhist iconography. A digital version of the standard art reference work, The Illustrated Bartsch, will offer approximately 57.000 images of Old Master European prints from the 15th to the 19th century. Based on the photographic archives underlying the monumental reference work, The Illustrated Bartsch, this project will offer digital versions of all the works reproduced, cataloged and described in the 96 volumes of The Illustrated Bartsch published to date, as well as related cataloging and interpretive data. The Foundation is also supporting the ongoing publication of 15 new volumes of The Illustrated Bartsch, with provision for integration of these new materials into ARTstor. ARTstor's efforts to provide for some of the basic imaging needs of teachers and scholars in the history of art should not be seen as fully defining ARTstor's collection development trajectory. ARTstor is actively seeking to texture traditional art historical canons and to respond to evolving methodologies and pedagogies - in art history and throughout the humanities. In some instances, specific collections are already being created or secured to respond to these evolving interests. A case in point is a suite of collections that might be said to deal with 'social iconography,' and which document the roles and representation of various social groups. These charter collections are intended, above all, to help ARTstor to assemble a broad international community of users and "content providers" around a shared mission to support education and scholarship via digital imaging technologies. Each collection represents a different approach to collection building, and together these charter collections embody collaborations with museums, slide libraries, publishers, faculty photographers, teams of scholars, and photo archives. Assessment of these models of collection building and the value of these collections to ARTstor's varied audience will fundamentally shape ARTstor's ongoing development. ARTstor aspires not merely to develop and distribute a digital image library, but also to work together with the educational and museum communities in deriving collective solutions to a common challenge: how to make high quality images and data available for educational purposes. Some of these services have been suggested above: enabling educational institutions to subscribe to 29

A N OVERVIEW OF THE A R T S T O R PROJECT

digital collections and in so doing to limit their own need to invest in creating and managing local digital collections; fostering the development of a range of software tools that encourage the integration of digital images and digital technologies generally into teaching, learning and scholarship in art history and related fields; sharing research about standards and best practices. Other areas where experiments in service development are anticipated include: software mechanisms enabling museum and visual resources professionals to take fullest advantage of, and also to assist in the enhancement of, ARTstor collection metadata; creation of a "union catalog" of art image metadata, a utility which, if successful, would be of significant value to the international community of visual resources professionals as well as to scholars; working together with colleagues to enable content from ARTstor to be used alongside data and images from the many other important efforts underway; and, finally, participating actively in international efforts to create shared and open means of allowing the wide range of technologies and systems employed in this field to interoperate seamlessly. Perhaps the greatest service ARTstor can - and hopes to - provide is the creation of a secure, regulated, networked space, defined by a framework of licensing agreements that embraces content providers, subscribers and service administrators; a locus in which educational and scholarly activities can flourish in ways that simultaneously respect intellectual property rights and encourage the scholarly and educational use of digital images, and enable the creation and widespread use of increasingly authoritative, sustainable and scaleable digital image collections. In conclusion, ARTstor seeks to develop a digital image library for the history of art, the humanities, and related social sciences, a digital library that, like our great academic and research libraries, is simultaneously a space in which education and scholarship flourish, a rich repository supporting these activities, and a public utility that will attract and provide a permanent home for valuable collections created by others who share ARTstor's educational and scholarly mission. In addition to the challenge of attaining increased and sustained international collaboration, there are other complex issues to be considered. Intellectual property questions must be addressed with the utmost care - and the nature of these questions varies considerably from country to country. The task of establishing standards - or commonly accepted best practices - for image-quality and scholarly data requires much more attention. A great deal 30

James Shulman more remains to be learned about the ways in which software development can better serve the needs of users. Additional work on the structure of catalogue systems for visual images (across different fields of study, in a variety of languages) is essential. In short, there are many actual and potential problems to be solved, and we can certainly expect disappointments, delays, disagreements and mistakes along the way. No one involved in an undertaking of this kind believes that there is any substitute for the experience of encountering, and responding directly to, actual works of art. From this point of view, the new technology might be viewed as offering nothing more than a possible - and perhaps only moderate improvement upon the photographic illustrations and slides that scholars and students have traditionally relied upon. From another perspective, however, the changes in higher education and museums that have already taken place - as a result of information technology - do indicate that something very fundamental is underway. The Internet, highly flexible software, immense computer storage capacity, advances in digital photography, and rapid distribution (or access) systems are - in their combination - powerfully transformative. They represent capabilities in the realm of visual images that are substantially - by orders of magnitude more potent and versatile than anything previously known. The fit between the new technology and visual images is an absolutely natural one. The potential educational benefits are unusually significant. Given such promise, it seems appropriate to move forward at this time with a project such as ARTstor, building upon the expertise and experience that has already been developed, while working closely with others who are active in the field and who are strongly committed to scholarship, teaching and learning. Turning then, again, to ARTstor, this service is to work with museums, photo archives, scholars with a view to the content development. It is one of the powerful 'islands', so to speak, which are presently under construction in the world of digital images. While issues of security, conservation environment etc. for unique objects have been dealt with quite a lot, this aspect of representing the content has not. It is the present situation that only too often, scholars turn simply to the internet and certainly find a lot of relevant pictorial material, but neither of the required quality nor are the output results sufficient from a systematic point of view. It has also been the - somewhat surprising experience in these processes that the availability of computers alone does not make the tasks easier. In a way, the development of IT or digitisation 31

A N OVERVIEW OF THE A R T S T O R PROJECT

projects is often one from initial enthusiasm to the facing of a number of real-world realisation problems which then make the monitoring only the more necessary of experience gained elsewhere. Also, it is important to learn more about how scholars really use objects, and to draw conclusions from this starting point as to how a pedagogical use of digitised object images could be conceived. Finally: how should large digitisation projects be best managed, and how can a prioritisation be made which are the most urgent ones ? If ARTstor is to work also with teachers and students - and it is of the strong intention to actually be used - , this is a longer process and requires to monitor what people have learned who, in many different places, have been concerned with such task. For the supply of digitised pictorial teaching material, it is necessary to monitor in particular -

32

how, precisely, is digitised material used for research purposes ? how should a priority list be established of which material to digitise ? what is required to establish a respective project and how can the material be used subsequently ?

Island situation ? Some observations on the work in museums as it affects digitisation efforts Max Marmor takes up the metaphor of museums as "islands" often working in isolation, and adds that this metaphor also applies to the related activities of universities. Institutions undertake the digitisation of pictorial material solely on the basis of immediate, presssing need for their in-house teaching requirements. This involves many significantduplication and overlap, where literally hundreds of redundant digitisation efforts are being made, often focusing on digitization of mediocre images of canonic works of art.. Museums are also "islands" compared to, e.g. libraries which have developed stable procedures and working plans over long periods of time whereas in museums, where the priorities and working processes often change at the discretion of a director or the director's successor. Nancy Allen states that individual museums, much more than libraries, operate in a particular kind of isolation, best described as the product of an "island mentality". This has many reasons in the history of the museums, in the absence of networks and shared tasks in the past which would have required closer cooperation, in the nature of a curator's work, seen by many to focus rather on underlining the importance of one's own collection than sharing collection information with others, etc. The consequences of this situation are obvious, and Nancy Allen cites just one example, based on her own experience when establishing for the first time an overall catalogue of museum objects - and a digital one - at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA). The existence of several separate catalogues, the transition from conventional to digital catalogues, and the changes occasioned by a digital approach to cataloguing the objects, clearly illustrated the problems of competition, 'island' isolation and information deficiencies both within the museum and in the interactions between museums. Another important consideration is that curators tend to believe that it is their voice alone which is authorised to disclose any information about the objects, and that never should any information (including online access) be published before full research on an object has been completed. The situation of competition that arises from all these factors is further sharpened by the policy of - sometimes high - admission fees and the general funding policies which counteract the museums' efforts to overcome that "competitive" image. 33

ISLAND SITUATION ?

Among the most recent ideas that have come up in museums is a strategy that hopes to generate income through the marketing of images, and in particular of electronic images, of their objects. There cannot be any doubt that it is part of the educational mission of museums to make their images available. If educational institutions are the target audience for marketing in an financial sense, however, there is little prospect of generating income since these institutions have only small resources at their disposition. This might be different if it entailed cooperation with commercial partners, but such cooperation would also pose new problems. For the USA, an exception to mention would only be a small but landmark project launched some time ago by AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors) now with 38 participating museums: AMICO - the Art Museums Image Consortium. The participating museums choose themselves which of their objects to bring online (a number of ca. 100.000 has been reached now); any institution or private user wishing to take advantage of the service subscribes to AMICO and pays a fee for the service. AMICO as a project is an achievement but also only a beginning. One of the perceived flaws of the consortium concept is that the choice of images to bring online is, of course, often primarily driven by the most recent works acquired by the museums. So, for a university teaching course in art history, or for a virtual museum of history of art, such model as given by AMICO is still not sufficient because it lacks the systematic collection required. In the discussion, as it continues, it is agreed that the description of an "island situation" in many respects is true for institutions in Germany as much as in the U.S. Further, the question is raised what incentives could function to motivate museums for an online presentation of their objects on a much bigger scale than presently. Economic as well as management issues are raised here: -

the question of linking such efforts to exhibition planning, the question of responsibility in the museum for creating electronic images, the question of working with museum audiences (which in future, to a large extent, will be more than the mere physical visitors) to suit their needs. It would appear that community-based projects like ARTstor would have an important role to play in this.

Because any project of digitising images is always bordering on further, neighbouring, or previous collections linked with the one chosen, the selection 34

ISLAND SITUATION ?

of the quantity involved in a digitisation project must be made very carefully. Since financial issues are involved, it is vital to keep to an acceptable cost framework. The Research Libraries Group (RLG) plays a role in the digitisation activities of museums in the U.S. in that this group is often their first choice as a partner (requiring less strict technical standards from participants than its library counterpart O C L C , the Online Computer Library Center) but it is not to be considered as the central focal point for museum collection digitisation efforts. The question arises whether ARTstor compares to A M I C O (which is a paying service): would it, then, itself be a paying service ? It is the idea that for ARTstor (along the successful model of JSTOR), institutions would be site-licensed paying subscribers at a rate still to be determined but end users would not pay individually. ARTstor/The Mellon Foundation would not be able to settle the costs of the digitisation out of the operating budget. A R T stor is well aware of the entire context first set up by the Bill Gates' Corbis, which has turned to Europe for digitisation and collection acquisition activities. A s far as ARTstor's own strategy is concerned, it is not simply waiting as a passive agent to be contacted by the individual 'island' image repositories but is also itself actively approaching e.g., libraries, museums and archives. Speaking of islands - as well as of bridges between them - , Graham Jefcoate reminds of the fact that the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in its very construction can be seen as an effort to connect the different areas of museums, archives, and libraries - which all share common problems of digitisation. When museums start considering digitisation of images it is time to recall that libraries surpass them in terms of the sheer number of images they hold, sc. those contained in rare and precious books and manuscripts (do not forget that the British Library for a long time effectively, and up to recently formally, was a part of the British Mtiseuml). These may well amount up to a million. Also, there are many examples for cooperation as it would be required between archives, libraries, museums, such as the Prussian and the British expedition to Dunhuang in China whose findings are scattered over several museums, archives and libraries all over Europe and China.

35

Bridges or continents as models for upcoming digitisation strategies ? In summing up the first discussion, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann states that there appears to be (exemplified in the ARTstor project) the possibility of two fundamental strategies: -

-

'build a continent' : to bring together, and centralise, all the different digitised resources from various institutions, in one central point (which also builds upon a central computer server). This is the short-term strategy presently followed by ARTstor; 'build bridges' between digitised resources which remain independent, in the custody of their creators, but are accessible at any time and can also be searched as a whole - both because of the efforts of the ARTstor project of chaining them together.

Hans Riitimann confirms that, from ARTstor's point of view, at present one central computer server is preferable for the overall aim: one coherent, cohesive, meaningful information system. Though the approach in Germany for building (electronic) information systems so far is a very decentralised one, the view on the user's end in such systems effectively comes down to the same as may be the case in ARTstor because this factor seems to be independent of the organisational approach chosen. Along the lines of this, the "euromuse" internet portal built up by a European team which the "Stiftung" has initiated, is based on a fairly decentralised model, too, though currently running on just one database. The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz itself presently aims at combining the information infrastructure of its museums, the archive, and its library. Given the overall conditions in the Stiftung, this can only be achieved by cumulation. Lutz Heusinger takes up the issue of cooperation - as well as reluctance to cooperate - and of the offers that ARTstor would contribute to such cooperation: would an envisaged strategy be here that e.g., the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., would continue to maintain its website but would permit ARTstor to use this site, too?

36

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee

Haffner

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS: Projects of Digital Art History Horst Bredekamp introduces the digital activities of the Seminar of Art History of the Humboldt University Berlin (HUB) whose library - like that of all universities and research institutes of the former Eastern Bloc - suffers from gaps, ie. missing acquisitions, in international literature between 1933 and 1989. The elder stock of literature is excellent, and staff have been - and are still - making every effort to compensate the shortage. As a consequence, the quality of the library is not to be underestimated. Despite this, several lacks cannot be filled and thus, there is a need to focus also on digital media, giving the Institute an additional profile. The Seminar of Art History of the HUB is the eldest institute of Art History in Berlin and one of the eldest in Germany. It had a rather important role when this subject was first established at the universities. Already in 1844, the Director of the "Gemäldegalerie" (Picture Gallery), Gustav Friedrich Waagen, was appointed extraordinary professor in order to build a bridge between the museum as aesthetically formative and academic teaching. In 1873, this first step of installing an academic art history was concluded by the offering of a chair in art history to Herman Grimm. In 1875, the Institute of Art History was formally founded. For the first time at a German university, Grimm built up an "Apparat für neuere Kunstgeschichte" ("Apparatus on modern art history"), i.e. a collection of photos and slides. He was one of the first art historians to realize the importance of modern media like photographic reproductions and slide projection. It was he who established large format slides and projectors for courses and the "Vergleichendes Sehen" ("comparative viewing"). Already in 1893, a photographic laboratory was set up which helped to change the rather small Institute into a center of scientific research. The tradition of the Institute is characterized by names like Heinrich Wölfflin, Adolf Goldschmidt, Albert Erich Brinckmann. After the time of "National Socialism" and the destructions of World War II, Richard Hamann re-established the Institute. From 1958 onwards, the professional direction was partly transformed according to the aims of the socialistic GDR and the continued existence of the Institute always was in danger. About 1989, it had diminished to only two rooms for

37

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS all the teaching personnel. After the opening of the wall, the Institute was refounded and the focus was laid on digital media.

CENSUS The first project to mention is the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance. The basic idea of this project, which was begun about 50 years ago at the Warburg Institute in London, was to collect systematically the ancient monuments which were known in the Renaissance. CENSUS is a research and documentation database which deals with the reception of the Antique, a central point in Renaissance research. On the basis of a data structure realized in the software system "Dyabola", CENSUS collects the antique monuments known in the Renaissance together with the pictorial and written documents about them (originating in the Renaissance), and including data on persons, places, time as well as bibliographic data. As a research instrument, CENSUS is aimed not only at art history and archaeology but at all disciplines connected with the afterlife of the antique. CENSUS itself is a research project; in addition the following items are in the focus: -

-

"Guidenliteratur" as a source the 'Encyclopedia of the Antique' by Pirro Ligorio which consists of more than 40 manuscript volumes and which has been scientifically edited and published so far only in a few small excerpts architectural drawings from the Uffizi/Florence.

Begun in London, CENSUS has been housed for years also by the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. Since April 1995, CENSUS figures as a department at the Seminar of Art History of the HUB. The international advisory board is built by the following institutions: The Warburg Institute, London; Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institut), Rome; The Getty Center, Los Angeles; Warburg-Haus, Hamburg. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Science is a funding member. There is a close cooperation of CENSUS with these institutions, and there is also close contact with the Winckelmann Institute at the Humboldt University (HUB) and the Winckelmann Society in Stendal. In the years 1997-2001, the CENSUS database was published on CD-ROM, since 2002 on DVD-ROM, too. Subscribers also have internet access to it. 38

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee Haffner The task of CENSUS is to document monuments and pictorial works of the Antique known in the Renaissance but it does not aim at an encyclopedic overview of the reception history of antique art. In view of the enormous number of relevant materials, it concentrates on listing which monuments from the Antique have demonstratably been known when, where and in which preservation state. The core of the data base is formed by source material which is scientifically edited and ready for further use to differing degrees; the entire data base is much larger and much more complex. It contains more than 200.000 records, 12.000 of which are monument records, 24.000 are document records. The written sources comprise collection inventories, reports of journeys, archival documents, CV of artists etc. The pictorial sources include drawings from sketch books, single drawings, and prints. Only a limited number of paintings, sculptures, medals, arts and craft are included additionally, because for these - given the creative adaptations of, and assimilations to, antique works of art - the direct knowledge of the antique models cannot always be proven definitely. Finally, the publications of modern research, devoted to the manifold forms and processes of artistic and antiquarian reception of the antique, are being included by their bibliographic references.

IMAGO (Slide Library) (Dorothee Haffner) In 1994, the pictorial database IMAGO was developed for the slide library of the Humboldt University Institute of Art History, as an instrument for the study of images according to themes/subjects. Head of the project is Horst Bredekamp, the development work was undertaken by André Reifenrath, his former research assistant. The system is by now used in several commercial picture archives, museums and research projects. 'Classical' databases usually were too inflexible regarding picture content analysis and indexing. Also, they rarely allow to search by fuzzy criteria. So, the requirements for the IMAGO development were: easy access, also for non-professionals - user friendliness no special terminology or notation - high flexibility for input and (especially: associative) research. Technical issues: Imago is a relational database (based on MS-ACCESS) under Windows with an integrated thesaurus editor. Currently, version V.5 with Windows 2000 is 39

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS being used. The database itself is to be transformed into SQL (Sybase) in the near future in order to produce dynamic XML exportability. An internet client for the software has also been realized recently. Since, in the Institute's use, the database is being used as an ordinary working instrument, normally only basic data of the pictures are being collected (artist's name, title, date, place, institution, material/technique, dimensions, source of the picture at hand, information on copyright). Authority files have not been used so far but - as the necessity became evident in the course of the network project PROMETHEUS (see below) - it is envisaged to begin using such standardized data for names, places, institutions as well as for subject headings (e.g., from S WD - the German libraries subject authority file, coordinated by the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt/Main, the German National Library) and to replace existing entries with these. The database offers two different search routines: -

the classical, text-based retrieval, by means of the basic data (name of the artist, title, place, etc.) the elaborated one, by means of keywords applied to every picture. Search is possible by means of iconography, style, motif, thematic questions etc. and - most important - by combining several keywords.

The thesaurus implemented for the diatheque data base "IMAGO" is based on several art historical books of rules (ICONCLASS, Getty AAT Art and Architecture Thesaurus, partially the MIDAS [Marburger Inventarisierungs-, Dokumentations- und Administrationssystem, described below by Lutz Heusinger] Thesaurus of Architecture). It was developed in its basics back in 1996, taking advantage of the help of a colleague who, as an art historian, at the time was going through an additional training as a scientific documentalist. Since there is still no comprehensive art historical thesaurus, it was decided to base the work on existing rule books and to use in addition handbooks and terminological lexicons from the field. The important aspect for us was that the thesaurus be comprehensive enough to cover all present research aspects but also be user-friendly, i.e. not require a long training period. It is an open thesaurus which is continuously being developed and refined. The structure of the thesaurus is similar to a file card box. All keywords are quickly visible: Ten main indexes represent the main categories of keywords - date - iconography (close to ICONCLASS) - type/form (painting, sculpture, architecture etc.) artistic landscape (refers to a regional character of works of art) - artist - artistic

40

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee Haffher principles - material - location - style - technique. Every main index contains a greater or smaller number of keywords in a hierarchical structure which can be combined in manifold ways and in any number. Depending on the number and structure of the object cards, IMAGO can be used as -

-

a picture archive (e.g., for the slide library of the Institute of Art History of Humboldt University) a documentation data base (for inventarization, documentation like in the "Sammlungsprojekt" of the Helmholtz Zentrum für Kulturtechnik HZK, see text by Jochen Brüning below) a research data base (for scientific research as in the project "Das Technische Bild" [The technical image] also at the HZK, see below).

In the slide library, IMAGO is in use as a mere retrieval tool, which approach results in a rather small amount of data input. r-Tgfxi t h Ed« View Go CemwuwMlc*

i

Back J * Bcoknwkt _J HUB

à

A

4L

c*

à i Reload Seech NeUcape Print Horn· lot«ben|tte//^S^eir>u>d*^oe^hWi

BWweken -Jh eüd*ohPfí J ¡ Buch»

α

Secufy '

3

a

Shop "

Foto».EDV.DB· J ¡ lr>itituüon»n ' j N w t ' l i i W

¡a

__„JSiiiHEH '

''J'

Piomelh*»

'

j^j W

ReWed

Munen J ¡ Fitwm , J SwvK»/St«*· J ¡ ZtturQf

CENSUS O F ANTIQUE W O R K S O F ART AND ARCHITECTURE K N O W N IN THE RENAISSANCE Die A n t i k e n e n z y k l o p ä d i e d e s Pirro Ligorio

ti ittit/ùMiaii

•

k^ttUiiUMii·

• fnjiijit*Ì»ι• ut)uiiί

»Aι

Mit der Antikenenzyklopâdie und den Schriften des Kunstlers, Architekten, A n t i q u e n und Gelehrten Pirro Ugono (IS13/14-15Θ3) hat sich ein einzigartiger geschlossener Komplex aus der Renaissance erhalten. Sein Anliegen war es, samtliche Denkmaler des antiken Roms zu erörtern: '...mi disposi a volere scnvere de le antichità di Roma, et di fuon abbracciando t u t t e le cose degne di memoria, et sforzandomi non pur dichiararle c o n le parole, ma ancora disegnarle, et porle aventi a gli occhi c o n la pittura," (Libro delle antichità di Roma, Venedig 1553, f. 26). Pirro Ugorlo kann insofern geradezu als Vorläufer des Census angesehen werden. Sein Oeuvre umfaßt 52 unveröffentlichte handschrifliche Bande mit rund 10.000 Manusknptseiten in den Bibliotheken von Turin, Neapel, Paris, Oxford und Ferrara. Es liegt vollständig in Fotokopie und Mikrofilm an der Arbeitsstelle des Census in Berlin vor. Seit 1997 wird die Antikenenzyklopadie ügorios systematisch in die Census-Oatenbank eingegeben. Begonnen wurde mit der Erfassung seiner Beschreibungen der antiken Denkmäler der Stadt Rom, die, einschließlich der verlmkung des daiugehöngen Bildmaterials und der Aktualisierung bzw. Neueingabe der dazuoehorigen Monumentrecords, 2001 abgeschlossen werden konnte.

«fin-

Où«««*'Don.

ϊ

ιΐ^

Ο

M

Fig. 3: Screenshot of "CENSUS of antique works of art and architecture known in the renaissance". (August 2002; www.census.de)

41

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS It is to be emphasized that the system IMAGO does not simply follow the usual programmers' approach but the hierarchical as well as associative functioning of the human brain, being modelled after the functioning of the "neuronal image processing". This is a means very consciously employed to enable a really associative and intuitive search. Seeing all keywords of an index simultaneously - as in a systematically arranged shelf-library - creates the effect of the "good neighbour" (Aby Warburg). The human brain generally works with intuitive relations between different objects or questions, often not explicable by ratio but highly stimulating. IMAGO tries to imitate and to support this kind of intellectual method.

"The technical image" and the IMAGO-image database The project and the research data base "The technical image" are affiliated to the "Hermann von Helmholtz Centre for cultural techniques" (HZK) and the Seminar for Art History of the Humboldt University of Berlin. Its aim is to reflect those scientific illustrations which have been developed over the centuries to visualize scientific findings. The name of the image data base as well as of the project is, first of all, signalling that these are images which have been technically produced, the methods of production spanning from early printing techniques to digital images. The subject indexing method specifically developed for "The technical image" makes it possible to compare - over centuries - specific image forms but also motifs. It is also possible to find a particular motif as realised in different image production techniques and the related apparatuses and machines. Thus, subject indexing produces iconographie arrays of previously disparate knowledge areas. They enable a search through "The technical image" by aesthetical categories and by styles. There are at present no studies of this kind since scientific illustrations have so far been judged only by their contents but not by what they convey about the aesthetics of their time of origin and how their technical basis exerts an influence on the knowledge displayed with their help. IMAGO is particularly characterized against other administration programmes by the high flexibility of the subject heading system, adaptable to the particularities specific to given subject domains. That's why it is possible for both the project and the database "The technical image" to capture their collections with this software. 42

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee Haffner The subject headings of the main system take into account the specifics of what is to be indicated by the concept "The technical image". Thus, on the first level there are not only the scientific, the popular and the "fingerprint and photograph" contexts from which the objects are being taken for the image data base. Subject headings concerning forms, functions, image production techniques, and materials of the objects are also found on this level. This is because the subject headings are at the same time finding aids for users. Since the image data base of "The technical image" is not intended as an archive but as a permanently broadening teaching and research tool, the indexing goes only as deep as four levels. This also makes it easier to continuously feed, at high speed, large amounts of material into the database. "The Database of Virtual Art" Virtual art is unique among art genres in that it is totally dependent upon storage media and the permanently changing operating systems that support it. This is an entirely new and challenging situation for art conservators and curators. It is not an exaggeration to say that at present, an entire decade of art is at risk to be lost for all time. Before artworks can find their way into the safe haven of collections, there has to be appropriate documentation. Supported by the DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science Foundation), the "Database of Virtual Art", which can be accessed via the Internet, provides a vitally needed information resource and web-based showcase for media art. The novel, specially developed database model documents in detail the rapid development of this art form and the fundamental uniqueness of contemporary digital artworks; a result of long years of experience and research. In this way, the Database of Virtual Art represents a first step towards the systematic collection of our most recent art genre. The web interface allows artists and researchers to post their material themselves so that it also fulfils the function of an information and communication platform where those interested can rapidly gain an overview or do more extensive research. The Database represents an important instrument for research on contemporary art, its integration within art history, and its analysis. It is a resource that facilitates research on the artists and their work for students and academics from all over the world who, it is hoped, will contribute to expanding and updating the information it contains. This useful system can, naturally, also be applied to other forms of art, for example, installations, multiples, films, and video. In this way, documentation changes from a one-way archiving of 43

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS key data to a proactive process of knowledge transfer. Particularly through the cooperation with national and international partners, interested groups and parties can be addressed directly. The artists, by handing over material, at the same time give their permission to publish it on the WorldWideWeb so that questions of copyright do not arise. Technical Data The Database uses PostgreSQL, at present the most advanced open source multi-user database. This has the advantage that there are no costs for software or overheads, development remains in the hands of the university, no dependency on large or small commercial firms arises, and no complicated copyright issues. The web pages are developed with JAVA'S JSP technology. With these technologies, a browser-based editing and publishing environment was created. This solution allows editing, server, and database to be platform-independent. The web interface, shortly to be completed, will structure and separate input so that artists will be able to post their material themselves with only minimal support from the project. This method of collecting material is likely to lead to a great increase in the amount of data. QuickTime video files are produced and integrated on one of the institute's G4 video editing suites using compression and editing solutions such as Media-cleaner, FinalCut, and Soerensen. The streaming server is powered by Darwin. Further workplaces (G4) are for web design and data collection, plus a SUN-server, which runs under apache/tomcat.

PROMETHEUS The Distributed Digital Pictorial Archive for Research and Teaching The aim of the cooperative project PROMETHEUS is to develop a web-based platform of knowledge for the University departments of art history, archaeology and design history. The two main components are: -

an integrated system of heterogeneous and distributed image databases which will be cross-linked by means of the internet multimedia tools as well as teaching and learning modules.

In this project, art historians, archaeologists, computer scientists, media designers, media pedagogues and students of related disciplines are to work 44

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee

Haffner

closely together. It started in April 2001, runs for three years (end of March 2004) and is being promoted by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research within the framework of the programme "New Media in Education" with almost 3,5 million Deutsche Mark (1,79 million €). Partners of PROMETHEUS are -

the the the the

University of Cologne (principal coordinator) Humboldt University of Berlin Justus Liebig University in Glessen University of Applied Sciences at Anhalt in Dessau and Kothen.

At Dessau and Kothen, the departments of design and computer science are specialized in the visualization of data base inquiries (e.g., with the project "TimeLine") and of the design of didactic modules in the area of distance learning and visual communication.

Fig. 4: Screenshot of Prometheus - Search. Results f r o m multiple Databases. (August 2002; http://prometheus.hki.uni-koeln.de) (Prometheus Standardsuche - Ergebnisse aus verschiedenen Datenbanken).

45

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS At the Justus Liebig University in Glessen, both the professors of art history and of classical archaeology are taking part in the project. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the use of a specialised text- and image-oriented database has been advanced in Glessen. In seminars there, the analogue slide projector yielded almost completely to digital image presentation. The Seminar of Art History of the Humboldt University of Berlin takes part in Prometheus with two elaborated data bases: IMAGO (Slide library) and the Database of the Virtual Art (see above). The University of Cologne is represented by three institutes: -

-

-

The Institute of Art History (Project Coordination), which deals with the teaching and research of the visual arts and architecture from the Middle Ages to the Modern The Institute for the Cultural-Historical Processing of Information, a genuinely interdisciplinary course of study in the sense of a humanistic computer science The Seminar for Pedagogical Psychology, in which multimedia teaching and learning modules have been successfully developed for years.

In this project, the visual organisation typified by the use of light-projector and slide - as it has been known up to now - should not simply be applied and reproduced in a digital form. Rather, a substantiated and stable knowledge has to be attained as to how computer media and digital pictures work in the learning process and how they can be employed for efficient learning and teaching. A central part of the plan is the structuring of a web-based platform of knowledge which brings together, among other things, the heterogeneous decentralized picture archives. They are being developed by participating institutes on internal servers and in their own image data bases. The contents of the participating research data bases range from archaeological materials to current developments in the arts such as virtual art in cyberspace. Visual search and selection functions are made available for the visualization of data base inquiries through modules (such as those in the project "Timeline" developed by the University of Applied Sciences Anhalt in Dessau). These search and selection functions will make it easier to attain large and complex quantities of data in each pictorial archive. The use of the platform will be strictly non-commercial and it serves exclusively for research and teaching. Thus, the right to use the pictures (which

46

Horst Bredekamp /Dorothee

Haffner

are by a large majority reproductions) can be obtained with restricted login rules. Commercial use of the pictures has to be authorized by the owners who are clearly indicated in the entries. Very important is the concept of heterogeneous, decentralised data bases. Different systems are brought together by the central server which unifies the data bases. The data bases only need to follow a certain technical standard (XML for exchange) and to contain the identical set of several main fields of information (Artist's name, title, place or location, date, technique, copyright, origin of the picture etc.). The use of standardised data is recommended. The second aim of the project is to develop pedagogical modules for current instruction and for the programme of self-study in the University departments of art history and archaeology. These modules are visualised in close interaction with designers so that the greatest possible user-friendliness and acceptance by both the students and the teachers can be obtained. The contents shall concentrate on preparatory courses (i.e. terminology training, ancient mythology, Christian iconography) and methods and techniques (i.e. description, iconography/iconology, stylistic and formal analysis, social historical perspective, gender-specific perspective). The project pursues a principally open concept in which in the future the new learning modules will be in reach of all the participants. In this way, the independence of the particular data bases and institutions is appreciated and a variety of career-qualifying educational possibilities in reference to digitisation and to maintenance of databases is promoted. The advancement of proficiency of both the teachers and the students in media is an important intention of the project. This is shown by the decentralised structure of the network which requires the interaction of all of the institutes with the new media, from the digitisation to researching in the internet up to digitised pictorial presentation. The new media will, in turn, be promoted through this interaction. With Prometheus, a networked platform of knowledge emerges for teaching, learning and research which is based on digital and distributed resources with didactic modules. After the end of the project, these resources will be available as an open-source system complete with a GNU public license.

47

CENSUS, IMAGO, TECHNICAL IMAGE, PROMETHEUS

Discussion A number of items are then discussed in connection with the presentations just given: Is the input, e.g. into PROMETHEUS, being done by a consortium, with division of labour (one institution provides the input of slides on a certain topic, another one that of slides on a different topic)? This is not the case, every participant (completely) introduces their own material, based on the current needs in the institution. Overlaps thus may well occur. Each institution administers its database in own responsibility. The problem of rights, e.g. in PROMETHEUS, where material from different seminars/institutions is brought together, with different ownership remaining? Will additional costs be charged by those providing the information (images), for showing it in the internet? Charging for the internet provision of the material will also create a more complicated provenance history for it !? Who will administer the system in future when the present project-funddriven consortium may no longer exist? This role will probably then be fulfilled by the present Central project Bureau in Cologne. The future of the whole project is not clear beyond its 2-years term. Presently, it is an intranet application. Also, it is prescribed in the funding conditions that the project and the resulting product must not be used in gaining income, so using an internet solution with password access against a fee is probably not within the realm of possibility. When these projects, as first efforts at digitisation in the relative areas, were started, there was an initial expectation perhaps best described by the optimistic phrase "Computers bring people together". In reality, it has turned out that for some time, quite the opposite was true: -

outspoken as well as unspoken attitudes like "My system is the best", many museums running in parallel 3 or 4 island solutions of IT systems for small, fragmented, completely sealed off small projects and which exist in complete isolation against each other.

Classroom testing of the material offered for teaching will start in the university term of October 2002. No experience is as yet available. Who are the users, the target audiences of the systems? Is it art historians or also the general public ? While ARTstor's potential for supporting class-

48

Horst Bredekamp / Dorothee

Haffner

room teaching will have to await changes in classroom technical infrastructures, it may well serve initially for the preparation of such teaching by the teachers/professors and possibly still more for independent study by students, following the lessons (image-based "course reserves"). Nancy Allen adds that very often, museum curators use such images in their own exhibition planning before the official photos from the lenders arrive. For such purpose, even 600.000 photos is not yet the critical mass. Horst Bredekamp adds that, while CENSUS is entirely designed for scholarly research by professionals, he shares the experience himself of handling hundreds of thousands of "no name" poor quality 'reference' images. Lutz Heusinger joins in by mentioning that maybe 3 mio. images presently cannot function for anything else but being placeholders which give a remote impression of 'the real image' and 'the real object' represented. This is Hubertus' Kohle's view as well: 60% of the slide images he needs can be provided by Google search and through Encyclopaedias, the remaining portion he scans himself. The question is then taken up what data standards should be required from those who provide information into the systems. Would not XML and some core info (names, titles, copyright indication) be the minimum to be required? Reconciliation of artists' names, then, is the next big issue. While PROMETHEUS presently accepts them as they come, the discussion of some of the project partners centres around authority files to be used, in the framework of thesauri to be established in the Cologne head office. Horst Bredekamp states that the thesaurus is the most difficult part to establish of the whole project. Unification and reconciliation of the material would thus not be made in each single institution, but at the central level of the system. In repeating each project's focus, it can be said that CENSUS is mainly destined for scholarly research while PROMETHEUS centres on university (and possibly school) class-room teaching.

49

Hubertus

Kohle

Digital Art History: the situation at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München In the humanities, with their long tradition of specialized scholarship, every attempt to enlist technology has faced considerable opposition. Especially in Germany, the gulf between these "two cultures" has gone deep. In this situation, the emergence of the World Wide Web ten years ago and the practical opportunities for its application, e.g. in linguistics or - as far as art history is concerned - in architectural reconstructions has lead to new, conflict-ridden but also fruitful constellations. While the latter have mainly been the preserve of specialists, whole specialized fields can no longer avoid dealing with electronic publishing applications and reflecting on the new ways of generating knowledge made possible by the electronic communication culture. For a university institute of art history, new perspectives and necessities are beginning to appear. This is especially true for the training of the students who in their future daily work - within or beyond the field of art history - will, to an ever growing degree, have to demonstrate IT knowledge. The reaction of the discipline to this has been somewhat reluctant, but at least somea reaction does exist. Regular curricular courses on the subject are being offered at least at some institutes. At times, adjunct posts relative to the use of IT are being created. More and more, the objects of visual analysis are being prepared digitally and the classical diatheque or slide library is being, if not abandoned, at least complemented by a digital approach. In addition, recently there have emerged prototype projects of electronic, i.e. internet-based teaching courses. The essential basis for successful teaching with digital media in the area of art history is a technical infrastructure which at universities exists in differing degrees and which, in times of scarce resources, often leaves much to be desired. For the faculties in the humanities at the München University, a centralised model of IT support has been introduced which has its benefits and its deficiencies. A dedicated group of scholarly and non-sccholarly staff has been established to keep the hardware and the networks functional and to advise in matters of electronic projects. Just to give an idea of the hardware aspect: Five staff are looking after about 1,000 computers. The daily problems 51

DIGITAL ART HISTORY

resulting from this will be obvious if this ratio is measured against the standards in industry or in American universities. But those problems probably count even more which result from inadequate familiarity with the new IT medium. Older staff especially, though no longer challenging the need for IT in general, usually find it difficult to adjust both in technical and in social respects to the new practice. But the interest of students in IT seems clearly accentuated, and surprisingly so even in a discipline like art history, which normally struggles with image of being a playground for daydreamers and privileged sons and especially daughters. The following is a short overview on the projects of the München Institute for Art History, almost all of which have emerged in cooperation with the student body and which strengthen the students' electronic competence while simultaneously applying specialized art historical knowledge - and, finally, which provide useful knowledge to the (scholarly) public. These projects can roughly be grouped into four categories: Some are, firstly, designed to present material. Others, secondly, require cooperation between different institutions and are intended to foster it. In a third area, perspectives on new forms of publication are being explored. And in the fourth and most sophisticated area, internet-based teaching courses are being developed.

Digitized art critique 1) The basic idea of the project "Emile Zola's critique of the [art] salon of 1866" was to provide scarcely-accessible but, from the standpoint of scholarship, highly relevant material. Art criticism has played an increasingly important role for (art historical) research in the last decades because it makes easier, and indeed alone enables, defining the historic locus of art. Such texts in art criticism have appeared in great number (for the salon of 1866, the relevant bibliography lists some 150 reviews), but mostly in daily or weekly newspapers which nowadays are accessible only with very great difficulty. An additional difficulty results from the fact that their publication scheme is a very inconvenient one, in terms of their usability: they are usually critiques published in instalments sometimes scattered over a dozen issues of the relevant serial. Whoever is interested to study them therefore not only needs to go to Paris and visit the Bibliothèque National (BN) but is also confronted 52

Hubertus Kohle with the rules for use of such libraries which may have disastrous effects in this case: in the BN, for example, a maximum of 10 items may be ordered per day despite the fact that in the case of these art critiques, only one or two pages in each item may be of interest. This makes the work very cumbersome. Here, the internet may be of help. Under http://www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/ Kunstgeschichte/projekte/zola/frameset.html we have built a site giving access to a number of these critiques, not all by far, but about one third. They are complemented by a list of the pictures exhibited, a bibliography, images of the works reviewed etc. The full-text capture of the texts (some only as images) makes apparent another advantage of the electronic medium which is especially relevant for this sort of text. Researchers are often only interested in critiques about one particular artist, and these can easily be retrieved by the full-text search command.

Sesbemn

•Ì . ,·

émitírt

get«

L«eMich*i

Xocfa

femie

' '..',.,.. :, ,..

fj*e

à lî·Γ. ΓΤ (. hllp7/www lak09uni muencherv(Je/Ku Neu laden Ì ^ J

Institut ftr Kunstgeschichte MünchPn Zolas Kritik: 'Mein Salon' Künstleriiste in Zolas Text Texte anderer Kritiker zum Salon 1866

·

J L ' U

AP/ík "ψ ·

J&

Salon Livret 1866 Bibliographie zum Salon 1866 Emile Zola Biographie. Links Der Pariser Salon Uber Zolas Kritik Projektgruppen. Kontakt

mí¿M

Emile Zolas "Kritik des Salons" von 1866 Emile Zola war ein engagierter und einflussreicher Kunstkntiker der Pariser Salons in der zweiten Hälfte des 19 Jahrhunderts Anhand seiner Kritik des Salons von 1866 - die mit Kritiken anderer zeitgenössischer Journalisten verglichen werden kann - stellt ein Team von Studenten des Institutes für Kunstgeschichte der L M U München Möglichkeiten des Mediums Internet im kunsthistorischen Umfeld vor

¿< c a Γ f«t¿"

H j g f

Fig. 5: Screenshot "Emile Zola's critique of the salon of 1866". (August 2002; www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/Kunstgeschichte/projekte/zola/frameset.html)

53

DIGITAL ART HISTORY

A really useful instrument, however, is going to emerge here only when a whole period of French art history has been electronically processed in this way - e.g., the period of the 'Seconde Empire' in which the avantgarde formed. This would bring the researcher, on rough estimation, into a five-digit range of number of pages and will thus not be that easy to achieve. Still, it can be safely assumed that such digitization projects make more sense than the digitization of complete novels which offers much less advantage for access.

A web page to accompany a museum exhibition 2a) Less oriented towards a scholarly than a general public is a project which emanated from the close collaboration of an adjunct faculty member focusing on "digital art history" (Katja Kwastek) with a group of students of the Institute and which was the product of a seminar. In parallel to an exhibition

Fig. 6: Screenshot "The Competition of the Arts". (August 2002; www.fak09.unimuenchen.de/Kunstgeschichte/projekte/Paragone)

54

Hubertus Kohle ("The competition of the arts") in the München "Haus der Kunst", this project undertook to build a companion web presence for use by those the planning to visit the exhibition, with the goal of deepening the knowledge gained by visiting the exhibtion and, of course, with the related goal of attracting further visitors (http://www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/Kunstgeschichte/projekte/ Paragone/). A certain emphasis was placed in this project on enlisting the participation of the institution "museum", that is, the still central professional field for art historians. The interest of museums in such offerings is still limited at this time, but it is growing and in addition, it offers some (again modest) possibilities for independent financing. Thus, the Institute of Art History at the University of Bochum has built in this way something like a monopoly for the Ruhr area which allows a partial funding of one of its staff (http://www.kgi.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/projekte/projekte.htm).

A digital art history's city guide 2b) A different form of cooperation with non-university institutions was intended in a project also aimed at a non-scholarly public. The "Brief München City Guide" emerged from a seminar but still considers itself a "work in progress" which is being continually updated. The focus is on the rich art historical resources of the city of München as far as they have materialized in the cityscape. In view of the target group, a brief, non-scholarly and in its appearance "colourful" presentation had to be created which would also convey some of the atmosphere of this city deeply influenced by the "longing for Italy" of the 19th century. In this case, it might be even more important than with the short internet exhibition just described, to feed the project into the right internet channels. Since the audience in this case consists largely of non-specialists who usually use the site for the preparation of city trips, these pages are also linked from the internet tourism sites of the city of Munich (http://www.muenchen-tourist.de/deutsch/stadtinformationen/muenchenstadtinformationen-einleitung.htm) - a simple step which has immediately lead to a clear increase in the number of hits.

55

DIGITAL A R T HISTORY

fiat» 3**ΜΜ ânwft Sehe \,ete2«t*«m looU E«m»» Ü»* ì . J m Halar i'-n, i )«p /Awjw lat.03 ir»mu*>r4w.de/Kumig*tcNcHc/il«dtluefrei/tarrw

.^

— 3 ^ 1

.

' j L - r

LE IN STADTK FÜ H — RE EnR R1 ¡IUI I wi J· MÜNCHEN & K® l

Herzlich

willkommen

beim kleinen

STADTFUEHRER n'tr cfigrn

>*λ

li *

Ihnen

Münihen

virtuellen

MUENCHEN.

von ,tein«r

st hörnten

Seile.

η ir * «PRES

:

ÜfflΓ**

Fig. 7: Screenshot "Munich City Guide" (August 2002; www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/ Kunstgeschichte/stadtfuehrer/home.html)

Electronic publishing in Art History 3) Among the new publication forms made possible by the internet, one should mention what is probably the "hottest" issue today in the humanities. Publishing, especially in art history with its images/reproductions very expensive to print, largely lives on public and private subsidies since the printruns are usually so small in number that rarely can a publishing house recover through sales the cost of production, let alone make a profit. This system - which has always been dubious from an economic point of view - is now perhaps about to collapse because especially public money (in scholarship and the sciences in Germany, mostly administered by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG - German Research Council) is becoming more and more scarce. It is, therefore, high timely to think about alternatives here.

56

Hubertus Kohle For years now, it has been perfectly typical for publishing houses to ask machine-readable files from the author(s). Now, instead of converting these files back into paper, it is legitime to think about using these files oneself and to skip the expensive analog step. Staff of the München Institute for Art History have taken advantage of this idea for a publication project which seems particularly "made" for this new electronic medium. For about a year and a half, an electronic review journal on the art history of early modern time ("Kunstform") has been issued, a journal which is by now accepted and used nearly everywhere in the discipline (http://www.sfn.uni-muenchen.de/ rezensionen/ kunstform/rez_kunstform.start.htm). Reviewing is still not much practiced in the discipline of Art History so there was a need here for action KMMtQ&K< h i t h l e ßatei

8« arbeiten

Anseht

Favoriten

Estres

3

MKIOSOII Internet Explorer zut Vctliiijung yi

I

Abbrechen Aktualisieren

&

Starts««

Such*)

Favoriten

0

\ iô·

Drucken

Beerbefcen

Ade«« | β http://www.sfn.unt-muenchen de/reier>sk*ien/kur^orm/rei_kur>st/orm_ft*t.hti

Urte '

historicum.net : server frühe neuzeit

Β uni! historìcum net

Wechseln 2u

Themen

Länder

Literatur

Rezensionen

Forschung

Links

hlrtorieum. r»«t ι Fachgebiet« ι «fa ι Reren.lonen ι KUHtTrOKM

Β /íwwbiitiirtde

l'i I Anmelfong t Orte

Künstler

Themen

•ana -i

D^iÁeh

8

8,1

Re«Β ef com

Porträts | Snelle ; «O % Vf

.BildiricïftM

g 'Ktfriífei Architekt iff

Dsrtfestelte Thenien: -, s,^tern9tt3chef,fono-d a^iisboltwlwt CMw

t,xt: Landern unii Çpûrhen G?,OC . ÒO ñldei!

Art sifititen unii Périrais; • Γ í'isiihíí ίιρ',ι'.(:ΒΓ Ordnung fitti 000 Eider)

Fig. 16: Screenshot "Visual Index to works of Art and Architecture". (July 2002; www.bildindex.de)

-

76

The first information system is the so-called "Bildindex zur Kunst und Architektur" - "Visual Index to works of Art and Architecture", also called DISKUS, which is the abbreviation of "Digitales InformationSystem für KUnst- und Sozialgeschichte" (www.bildindex.de). Whoever contributes images or data to DISKUS, becomes a member of it and gets, if desired, every three months a new, enlarged and updated version of the common union database, not only in order to use it for retrieval purposes, but mainly to have the newest version of our authority files and controlled vocabulary for use in the coherent construction of further records. Among others, several museums of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz - which is holding this present symposion - contribute records and images to DISKUS. Presently, DISKUS contains about 400.000 object

Lutz

Heusinger

records and 1.450.000 images, mainly on the art and architecture in Germany, but also of other countries. The participating museums also publish their material, which has been input to DISKUS, on CD. The most recent of these publications has been the catalogue of paintings for the Nationalgalerie Berlin [National Gallery Berlin], by the way, already the third updated and enriched edition of this work. 3 ManuicnpU Mrdi.icv.ilM ßate*

Beerbe»«!

èracht

> . '-» Zuü* : Alette

Wp

ta

Microsoft Internet f fevoiíen

à

E ¡¡Oat

κρίοιοι 2

'j"

Ablachen Mtuabwtn menuKicta-mefeevetede/

3

Siwteie

J a SÌ Sicher, fanxtenVeriaui

E-Mai

J*

Diudtan

W

Beeibwen

.

Φ com

ΗΠΒ m

Real

f

Handschriften - Links

Handschnftendatenbank^'-A*,

t " α> Digitalisierte Handschriften r J-C

' • -i&Jmh : Diskussionstat» IIff

J

φΜ itffr

S«hf>«Hm«Dt: 1 Freitext

dl

t e

Jund j J Sucfcbegni* m*

|fconog> S**wort

*J

dirytstiWt Piftofìi fwwT3

JSWwwrtP·»»»»

»J

(und ¿ J

JsWwortTopogrtl» »J

I

KaU|«m> Um

&

u m .

Fig. 19: Screenshot 2 "Medieval manuscripts in German libraries". (July 2002, www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de) HnC! f fiatai ßeeibeten »· Zuñkk "ten«

.

Antichi

Ewrtelto

i

Egd«

J

4

•· . i .·/..·..·.·• Abbrechen «JuaWeren Statte«« //mm manuK*l*»A>ee Kaiegonen aller Registerkarten miteinander verknüpfen

As.:haff«nburg Ms. 15 - 02S7ver*o Registerelnlrag pnmfca 11 162 (AARON) * Aaron (nichl im biblischen Kontext): mögliche Attribute: Ikon Weihrauchgefall, hoherprlesterliche oder bischofliche Kleidung, Salbgetaft, Gerte oder blühender Stab

Mn« « V 14'» (ViMIMBWtfnno··

M, ÜÜSB^

Stuttgart Cod. brew. 148 0307v*rto Regietereiiitrag primer» 11 162 (AARON) ' Aaron (nicht im biblischen Kontext): mögliche Attribute: Ikon WeihrauchqefaK, hoherprlesterliche oder bischofliche Kleidung. Salbgefall, Gerte oder blühender Stab

iJ

Fig. 20: Screenshot 3 "Medieval manuscripts in German libraries". (July 2002, www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de)

79

T w o UNION CATALOGUES

The database of medieval manuscripts also contains the search feature for "initia" (235.000 entries at present). It is obvious that Manuscripta Mediaevalia is primarily a medieval library in digital format, a kind of paradise for scholars of many disciplines, but it can and should also be seen as the most comprehensive and substantial part of a digital medieval image collection, including many, many illuminations which are almost unknown. «ΠΕΙ Zuucfc

AttoMtoi Akmdwewn StaMi

φ W .' AV biWindex de

Suchen Fauatai Vaiai Künstler

Anmeldung

E«ai Themen

Dtucken BeeiMen Reetcan Porträts

Orte

fi beriin β ! Berlin fe öffentlicher f'rofartbau IS BMungsbau f£ Mosewrebagtw (aìph.) «¡ ABes Museum β Außenbau β Hauptfrwi • Vorhalle """MU"

Fig. 21: Screenshot Search Result 1 "Visual Index to works of Art and Architecture". (July 2002, www.bildindex.de)

Returning to the "Bildindex zur Kunst und Architektur" (www.bildindex.de), which offers different ways of entry/access to its content. One of them is the topographical one, which can be used with the option "Material aus allen Einrichtungen" [Material from all institutions], or "Material" - only of a single institution. This, of course, is important for the partners: For the user, the scholar, the teacher, the student it is important to see as much material from as many institutions as possible. For example, 102 photographs from eight

80

Lutz Heusinger institutions, all illustrating the main facade of the Old Museum in Berlin, are brought together. The "Bildindex zur Kunst und Architektur" is not an easy-to-explain digital publication like, for example, the database Joconde of the Musées de France or the database of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., because it has a much longer history. As German Documentation Center of Western Art, Foto Marburg not only has to produce and to collect photographs but to help people find them, wherever they are and whoever owns them. Therefore, exactly 25 years ago Foto Marburg started to rent other institutions' photographs, to process them for these institutions and to publish them in topographical order, according to place names, on microfiche. Since then, with the help of K. G. Saur Publishers and the support of subscribers, Foto Marburg published 1.6 million photographs on art and architecture in Germany. In 2005, there will be 2 million, published in 6 alphabetical series. In order to improve access to this material, since 1981 computers have been used to produce captions where photographs were not already labelled. Learning from American colleagues, who in those days wanted to build up the so-called American Museum Network with the center Stony Brook, a data model, a data dictionary, authority files and so on were developed and called MIDAS, "A Method of Indexing and Documenting Art Systematically" or - in German - "Marburger Informations-, Dokumentations- und Administrations-System". MIDAS is, wherever possible, based on the libraries' "Regeln für die alphabetische Katalogisierung in wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken" [RAK/WB, the German library cataloguing code]. It also includes the iconographical classification system ICONCLASS, the new Thieme-Becker (Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon) as authority file for artists' names, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, and so on. Of course, "Manuscripta mediae valia" has also been constructed according to MIDAS, so that both information systems can easily be joined into one documentation system. Because there was nothing similar in German-speaking countries, Foto Marburg was asked by the Volkswagen Foundation in 1990 to develop, in partnership with some museums, a project of computer-aided museum documentation, using MIDAS and integrating the data and images of the objects into a digital version of the Marburger Index. This was also the beginning of a collaboration with the museums of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Again commissioned by the Volkswagen foundation, a start was also made 81

T w o UNION CATALOGUES

later to develop similar projects with German monument preservation authorities, the so-called "Landesdenkmalämter", and with 14 university and research institutes of art history. In this way, an association/network of institutions has been established which now - more or less regularly - work together. The network activity took the name DISKUS, partly because it was hardly possible to publish individual museums' catalogues out of our database and image files under the name Marburger Index, which had to be reserved for our still ongoing project of publication on microfiche. In 1997, the German Research Council (DFG) gave the money to have the 1.4 million images on microfiche digitised and placed in the world wide web by Foto Marburg, together with about 50.000 digital images that had been received from museums. Given this short development historical outline, what current deficiencies of Foto Marburg's product can be identified ? The following 5 shall be named: No.l: The 1.4 million black and white photographs (6.5 MB each) are only place holders. It is the hope that their owners will replace them in the next years by better digital copies, and Foto Marburg would like to be the pioneer in this field - ideally with the help of the generous friends in New York. No.2: 1.1 million black and white photographs have been published with their old labels. Therefore, they are not indexed in the database. That means: they can only be found in the topographical section of the Bildindex. The retro-conversion of the content of their legends or the cataloguing of the photographed objects has still to be done. But at least 300.000 of the photographs are fairly well accessible under many points of view. No.3: The Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rom and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence have for years been contributing to the Foto Marburg database the object records they produce for captioning the photographs in their photo collections. These records are a valuable part of the Bildindex database, although the related photographs have not yet been digitised and can only be seen in Rome and Florence, respectively. As soon as both institutes scan these photographs, Foto Marburg will have an almost perfect, or at least the best possible, Italian wing in the Bildindex. No. 4: Probably, no German museum has a complete verbal and visual documentation of its collection. Therefore, every museum can only contribute 82

Lutz Heusinger some data and some images, even though sometimes they do not correspond with each other. In line with this, it is probably good for scholars, teachers and students as well that the museums of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, for example, have integrated into Bildindex Marburg 75.000 records and 9.000 images, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg 35.000 records and 28.000 images, the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin 20.000 records and 13.000 images, the museums of Cologne 30.000 records and 15.000 images, the museums of Hamburg 9.000 records and 4.000 images, and so on. No. 5: While each black and white photograph is available in a file of 6.5 MB, the Marburger Bildindex' colour images are much smaller because they have been prepared to be published on the limited space of CD/ROMs and the museums did not pass on better versions. This means: the colour photos in the Bildindex are also only place-holders.

Fig. 22: Screenshot Search Result 2 "Visual Index to works of Art and Architecture". (July 2002, www.bildindex.de)

In spite of these 5 deficiencies, having the "Visual Index of Art and Architecture" is a good basis, and it can be improved and enlarged step by step in or83

T w o UNION CATALOGUES

der to slowly overcome these deficiencies, especially if good cooperation with others is maintained. In this respect, the initiative of ARTstor could be of remarkable importance for the development of documentation in Germany. Once more, back to the Bildindex. Its partners are four archives, one publisher, 12 German Denkmalämter [Monument preservation authorities], 14 university institutions, 20 museums. The already mentioned VW Foundation financed the initiative with 15 Mill Euro. Besides the topographical access to the Bildindex collection, there are three other access modes (in a manner suitable for browsing), to artists, to iconographical subjects, and to portraits of persons and geographical entities. Eoi»

geabetcn

¿reicN

£avMken

EjjIlM 2

AáotU tfJUpM..*- ÍM, Φ

WWW b j W ! n d e * . d e

ί 61 ?»¿72^¿7-aifEE ¿

!

Anmeldung

!

Orte

KiHtsdei

Themen

Portiate

Suche

i

\J

Fig. 23: Screenshot Search "Visual Index to works of Art and Architecture". (July 2002, www.bildindex.de)

And besides the browsing mode, there are many possibilities of searching (with or without the use of a browsing function through indexes). Finally, some possible contributions from Foto Marburg to ARTstor could be suggested: 84

Lutz Heusinger 1. Foto Marburg data are carefully structured, controlled, and homogenous. Therefore, they could easily be transferred into the ARTstor system, in whatever way this will be constructed. Only one thing has to be done: the controlled vocabulary should be translated, and English versions of the names added to the authority files. In the case of the iconographical authority file, this job has already been done. With some financial help, the rest could easily be done within a year.

Fig. 24: Screenshot Search Result 3 "Visual Index to works of Art and Architecture". (July 2002, www.bildindex.de)

2. Foto Marburg would like to scan its best 100,000 photographs of German architecture and works of art not in museums, and to record these objects on the basis of the legends of the photographs and of new publications. Among these 100,000 photographs could be, for example: - a collection of 43,000 colour slides of German wall paintings which come from a campaign driven in 1942/43 by the ReichspropagandaMinisterium in order to facilitate the reconstruction of the monuments 85

T w o UNION CATALOGUES

after the war. Many of these slides show masterpieces which by now have been permanently destroyed, for example in Berlin and Dresden. - 22,000 photographs of Helga Schmidt-Glassner, 6,000 photographs of Walter Hege, another 6,000 of Karl Ernst Osthaus; all these are photographs of an extraordinary quality and art historical value. If the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz would also contribute its available 75,000 records illustrated with high quality images, ARTstor would have a fairly representative start of 175,000 images of art and architecture in Germany together with pretty good data. After that, a scheme of annual contributions to enlarge and update this "German section" of ARTstor could be foreseen. If ARTstor would find a way to give more or less free entry to those who contribute a reasonable part of what they have, this could definitely stimulate the co-operation which is needed so much. In turn, the use of the DISKUS database is free, but registering is required so that the Institute Foto Marburg gets some ideas about the users.

Discussion On the respective question of Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, Lutz Heusinger replies that no central control is exercised presently over the contributing institutions to make them supply their input in conformance with the rules. However, every three months the complete catalogue data set (not the images) is redistributed to the participants so that the file acts as a "de facto" standard in accordance with which contributors orient their input. This name authority file could thus enter easily into exchange with those files held by the German National Library (DDB) and by the Library of Congress who are presently, as Mr Ermert remarks, entering into a test process of automatic matching of their files. Again, the complicated question of rights arises, the existence of which was probably not perceived in this way when the large-sized undertaking was started in 1977. There is no formal authorisation by the museums to the Union Catalogue to show the images to a general public (in the beginning, there were only microforms anyway, consulted like library books) - but on the other hand, semi-public funding of about 3.5 Mio. went into the project which must be assumed to constitute a certain right of consultation for the public. 86

Jochen

Brüning

Humboldt's Virtual Wunderkammer 1. The starting point 1.1 The Humboldt - Universität owns eminent scientific collections. They date back to the 17th century, stemming from such prominent sources as the Brandenburg-Preußische Kunstkammer. Beginning with the 18th century, private collections of laymen and scholars joined in, equaling if not surpassing their noble predecessors. Leibniz was one of the first to focus intellectually on such collections as the material basis for all scientific development, as expressed in his proposal for the foundation of the Prussian Academy in 1700. Wilhelm von Humboldt adopted this viewpoint in choosing the Berlin collections, then mostly in the possession of the Academy, as the cornerstone on which to found the Berliner Universität in 1810. After almost 200 years witnessing great gains as well as great losses, there remain roughly 30 million objects in more than 100 individual collections. Most of these are currently kept on the premises of Humboldt - Universität, the major part in the world famous Museum für Naturkunde. Of course, almost all traditional European Universities own scientific collections of value, but the Humboldt collections are unique in their uniform quality and the manifold heritage they comprise of the most successful period in Germany's scientific history. The university in Berlin was then a world center of development in most fields of research, many universities all over the world were founded following its example, until the Nazi regime put an end to it. 1.2 In spite of bitter losses, an unexpected wealth of objects survived the war in relatively good shape. But a similar if not larger danger for the collections arose from the spirit of the fifties and sixties, an almost aggressive contempt for all remnants of the recent past which determined also the treatment of university collections, alike in both parts of Germany. Only thanks to a lucky coincidence do some physiological instruments from the hands of du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz survive to this day, whereas hundreds of marvelous "Moulagen" were transformed into church candles. As a matter of fact, it must be stated that even today the totality of the Humboldt collections is neither physically safe nor appropriately explored. The Eastern wing of the 87

HUMBOLDT'S VIRTUAL WUNDERKAMMER

Museum für Naturkunde was destroyed in 1943 and has remained in this state ever since. Work is now underway to record systematically the condition of all the collections and to coordinate the most urgent rescue measures; maybe, one day we will also see the museum restored to its former beauty. Interest in the collections was revived only through the financial needs brought about by the German reunification. In 1995, acting Humboldt President Marlies Diirkop asked art historian Horst Bredekamp to assess the material value of the university collections. This triggered the idea of a closer inspection, which was started soon after by Bredekamp in cooperation with Jochen Brüning and Cornelia Weber. The first impressions alone were so overwhelming that the decision to launch a thorough study and, eventually, an appropriate presentation was unavoidable. There was, however, no basis for such an ambitious project, notably no financial resources, so we had to invent a "cheap" alternative: This was the birth of the database project, "Humboldt's virtual Wunderkammer".

2. The Database Project 2.7 A database for the purpose of managing the slide collection of Humboldt's Seminar für Kunstgeschichte had already been designed in the early nineties; with the fitting name "Imago" it had become a commercial product. This database seemed to provide the right framework even for the ambitious project of registering all the scientific collections. The main designer and owner of "Imago", André Reifenrath, has accompanied the enterprise from the very beginning, first as a member of the university, later and to this day as CEO of a software company. He provided significant help and inspiration but the funding had to be found elsewhere. Fortunately, the VolkswagenStiftung could be convinced to support the first years of the Wunderkammer project with a very substantial amount of money. The favourable decision and the continuous advice of the responsible people at the Stiftung was pivotal for the beginning of the work and for whatever success was achieved since then. The money acquired was invested in man- and woman power: four scientists and six students set out to explore, to register, and to map out the vast field of the Humboldt collections. Now, it is easy to calculate how long it would take such a small crowd to create a database comprising the whole 88

Jochen Brüning treasure or any significant part of it - of many millions of objects! Thus the first important strategic decision addressed the evolutionary character of the project: the purpose had to be the design of the relational structure and the thesaurus, and possibly to install measures ensuring the intellectual as well as technical maintenance of the database for many years to come. The production of the necessary large data flow we had to leave to the individual collections and their custodians, providing any advice needed but hoping for their ability to muster additional manpower, from inside or outside the university. This will certainly remain a difficult task for each single collection, large or small, but at least it can be said that our strategy has been accepted widely inside the university, among scientists and administrators alike, and the project now constitutes its own department inside the Zentrum.

Fig. 25: Screenshot Imago Database (October 2002)

Thus, the "Wunderkammer" project is by now part of a larger scientific endeavour at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum which has become known as the "Sammlungsprojekt". Besides database design, it aims at conducting research on the scientific collections and the context they reveal; some thought is also given to the theoretical foundation of collecting, as a funda89

HUMBOLDT'S VIRTUAL WUNDERKAMMER

mental cultural pattern. Recently, this department got also quite deeply involved in the project of building a so called "Humboldt-Forum" in place of the former Stadtschloß. All this started in 1996 with the aforementioned informal collaboration between Horst Bredekamp, Jochen Brüning, and Cornelia Weber. In 1998 the support of Volkswagen-Stiftung under whose auspices Thilo Habel, Jürgen Mahrenholz, Ulrich Moritz, André Reifenrath, and Uta Simmons were (or are still) working in the project, supported by many students whose work was essential for every step of the development. 2.2 Obviously, the main difficulty which was met in designing the structure of the database arose from the heterogeneity of the objects that had to be dealt with, comprising practically every museological category, from twodimensional texts and images to the mostly three-dimensional objects found in the sciences to the historical recordings kept in Humboldt's Lautarchiv. There was no Thesaurus available to cover this variety; to be sure, many individual disciplines have developed highly sophisticated thesauri for their respective fields of interest, but those are generally not compatible with each other. Besides, the project was guided by scholarly as well as pedagogic interests and considerations. As far as history of science was concerned, the focus was set on the most successful period of science in Berlin, starting roughly with the foundation of the university in 1810. It was the aim to reconstruct the underlying network of science, and to understand better which mechanisms and interactions attracted such a number of outstanding talents to a politically and economically exhausted environment, transforming the young university into a new Mecca of science in a very short time. The surviving testimony of this network consists mostly of the objects in the collections, collected, prepared, and ordered by the great predecessors. Hence, the description of these objects in the database is tailored according to the material base of science which may fittingly be called the practice of science, which is meant to encompass also all technical aspects which may be of importance in handling a given object; here, an often hidden driving force governing the development of science can be identified, and one which is rarely addressed in writing. In fact, this general program has greatly influenced the design of the database. Structuring the thesaurus faced other difficult problems. As already mentioned, the task was close to designing a thesaurus "for everything"; on the other hand, there was a need to formulate and to incorporate the interests of the prospective users. In the first place, we thought of all institutions of the Humboldt-Universität which are still preserving or collecting, then of all 90

Jochen Brüning other institutions with similar interests anywhere in the world. Even though this was a relatively small circle of clients, their criticism would be vital for success. On the other hand, there was the firm belief that the "virtual Wunderkammer", in combination with the actual collections, could become a powerful and important tool in academic education. After all, education had been the driving force in the development of quite a few individual collections, as in the case of the Winckelmann-Institut or the Institut für Zoologie. Moreover, an important role was foreseen for the collections in the process of representing the university and forming a new identity which could transport the great heritage of the past into a bright future. For these purposes, it seemed mandatory to make the Wunderkammer available through the internet. This implied that, ultimately, the thesaurus had to serve the layman and the specialist alike. Let us summarize the main requirements which we want to be fulfilled by the "virtual Wunderkammer": A. Scientific requirements All objects should be represented with the best possible imaging techniques and listed according to the latest standard of the scientific field they belong to. The "praxis of science" connected with each object and the interaction between scientists and artists, donors and politicians should be mapped whenever it can be discovered. B. Pedagogical requirements The database should be accessible to the interested amateur, it should encourage and honour navigation based on nontechnical language. In particular, it should allow associative queries which are of great importance for lectures and seminars. C. Museological requirements The system must support the handling of the objects, in particular in connection with exhibitions. It shall allow the assembling and printing of catalogues and exhibition scenarios. D. Evolutionary strategy In view of the very limited ressources which the university will ever be able to invest in this project, a long development period must be envisaged until 91

HUMBOLDT'S VIRTUAL WUNDERKAMMER

Fig. 26: Portrait Collection of Humboldt Professors; Hermann von Helmholtz

92

Jochen Brüning the database will truly live up to the name given here: "Humboldt's Virtual Wunderkammer". Therefore, we must see to it that the quality of the system, its basic structure, its thesaurus development and its adaption to new technical standards and possibilities, is guaranteed in the long run by at least a small task force of specialists. 2.3 For the time being, the state of our project may be viewed as rather encouraging. The goals mentioned above are certainly not completely reached yet, but there is good reason to believe that this will be the case two years from now. The support of Volkswagen-Stiftung will cover exactly this period, afterwards the university has to step in. The thesaurus development also followed an evolutionary pattern: the start was made with three individual collections which were not too large but otherwise as different as possible, in order to provide a very serious test for the joint vocabulary to be developed. As these pioneers were selected -

-

-

the Portrait Collection of Humboldt Professors, with roughly 1,700 portraits of scholars from 1800 till today, such that the biographical sketches to be found in the database form a university history in the nutshell; the Pathological Exhibition of the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum, dating back in part to Rudolf Virchow, comprising some 1,200 objects illustrating the pathology of the human body; and finally the already mentioned Lautarchiv featuring ca. 7 500 Shellac recordings made between 1909 and 1944.

This work is now almost completed, and it was managed to produce a coherent thesaurus which satisfies the relevant requirements above. This encourages the hope that, by mild adaptions of the basic structure and continuous inclusion of specialized thesauri, eventually all the Humboldt collections will be adequately represented in the database. In the next step of the development, which has already started, this hope will further be corroborated by incorporating ca. 100 objects of each collection in the next test sequence, among them microscopic preparations, architectural plans and photographs, and original drawings from the hands of the eminent physician and "Naturforscher" Johann David Schöpf (1752-1800). The new test collections have also been chosen with a view to find, to learn, and to implement some of the latest technology in digital imaging. Given the rapid development of these technologies, it must be expected, however, that some of this work will have to be redone in the future. 93

HUMBOLDT'S VIRTUAL WUNDERKAMMER

Fig. 27: Portrait Collection of Humboldt Professors; Emil Du Bois-Reymond

94

Jochen Brüning Along with the progress in working with the collections, the underlying software has been improved step by step in response to changed requirements; the necessary changes were incorporated each time in the next regular update. Most importantly, the system has been based on Sybase, which guarantees simultaneously an unrestricted dataflow and a stable network performance. Another interesting test case arises from importing, in the next couple of weeks, an already existing database working with MS "Access". This database contains the Tierstimmenarchiv [Archive of animal's voices], one of the largest collections of animal voice recordings in the world, brought together by Günter Tembrock since 1951. There is no need to adapt the structure of the Wunderkammer database vis-à-vis this new import, but the thesaurus will be enhanced to represent all birds and all mammals; quite a few other collections will have to use these keywords, too. 2.4 Turning to the technical features of the database, as mentioned above, the software "Imago" originally answered the needs of managing the slide collection of Humboldt's Department of Art History; it has been modified and enlarged and provided with a completely new thesaurus in the course of the project described here. For the development of the database, it proceeded according to the following steps set out at the beginning: 1. Analysis of the first test collections and formulation of the requirements for the software. 2. Modification of "Imago" in order to fulfil this task. 3. Design of the database. 4. Development of a stand-alone solution for the test period. 5. Establishment of a local network to allow the systematic decentralized use of the system by seven clients. 6. Establishment of the Sybase version of "Imago", to be supported by Humboldt's computer center. 7. Adding a Java browser to allow the use of the database via internet. These steps are now completed; hence it is possible to use the system freely inside the university (for the time being; the internet appearance will be postponed until further tests are conducted). Also, the development of the database is now part of the long term planning of Humboldt's computer center.

95

HUMBOLDT'S VIRTUAL WUNDERKAMMER

2.5 The technical data for "Imago" are collected in the following summary: IMAGE 24, Technical basics: Imago 32 Bit, 32 Bit Windows-Application in C++, Layer based and modular functional set-up, Three internal Layers: View+Controller, Model-creation, Data management. Imago Modules: Object-intake / -creation, Object information: object-type related index display, Object view: light-table, picture-zoom, Thesaurus: query, keyword assignment, User-management/ Administration. Hardware requirements: Client: Imago 32 Bit / Inter- / Intranet Client: Pentium III or higher, 64 MB RAM or more, 17" Monitor with at least 800*600 resolution, Network Interface Card (Intranet operation); Server: DB-/Intranet-Server: Pentium III or higher, 128-256MB RAM, 10 GB HDD or more, At least 10MBit Network. DB-/Internet-Server: From Pentium III and up and 450 Mhz or more, 256 MB RAM Imago Internet In the most recent stage of extension of the Imago Internet version, the Java Client has been added alongside the Standard C Client. This enables a platform-overlapping usage of all the Imago functionalities for the acquisition and the research of data. In this stage of extension, the usage of the Imago system is not bound to any network boundaries anymore. Technical specifications: Platform-independent distributed Internet / Intranet-application: Java-Application, Applet, HTML, Client-update via Internet / Intranet, Provision of data on the Internet and Intranet. Topology Imago Internet: Multiple Clients: Java- / HTML- / (C++-) based. Beans / JSP / Servlet. Communications interface: HTTP-Server with Servlet. javabased middleware. Passive or active database. Supported scenarios: Imago 32 Bit and Imago C/S allow the use within an Intranet. Imago C/S enables the internet usage via a permanently installed client after security adaptions. Imago Internet furthermore offers the secure access via Internet with online-loadable or permanently installed clients.

3. Perspectives 3.1 The cooperation between university and private business has notorious difficulties which can hardly be avoided. In our case, the software was a privately owned product while the thesaurus and the database were designed by a 96

Jochen Brüning university project enjoying public support. Thus, it seemed a good solution to mutually license the products of both partners and to join forces in an effective marketing of the software and the thesaurus. The legal structures for such a joint enterprise are in the making and should be ready for implementation very soon. We see this development with great hopes but, lacking relevant experience, have to see whether this new construction will actually live up to the expectations. 3.2 The last decade has witnessed a re-awakening of interest in the concrete, material foundations of science and of our culture in general. The threedimensional reality maintains its position vis-à-vis the continuously increasing perfection of the digital world for the time being, and this is underlined by a massive "return of the objects" to be observed everywhere. This general development has also triggered new interest in long forgotten collections like those described here, and many European universities are becoming aware of their tradition and their material heritage again. Around the turn of the millennium, the Humboldt collections were the focus of an exhibition which was shown in Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau under the title "Theatrum naturae et artis. Wunderkammern des Wissens." For the Humboldt-Universität and in particular the Helmholtz-Zentrum which was responsible for the project, this meant an enormous effort but also a rare success in an arena which is not really familiar to people in academia. As a reward following this extraordinary event, a rather breathtaking perspective opened up for the university. After twelve years of intense discussion, a high ranking committee was appointed by the the German national Parliament, the Bundestag, to work out a proposal for the future shape of the Berliner Schloßplatz, the location of the former Stadtschloß (City Castle). This committee recommended rebuilding the Stadtschloß reconstructing its historical facade, but leaving otherwise every freedom for a contemporary architectural solution of comparable quality, and to put it mainly to a cultural use, including the presentation of selected parts of Humboldt's Wunderkammer. Meanwhile, the Bundestag has supported this resolution but has still to decide about the financing, certainly not an easy matter with obvious conclusions. If, however, the rebuilding will indeed be carried out, then a new phase opens up for the work with the Humboldt collections. Far beyond the virtual horizons that are of concern here, there will be the opportunity to display the long hidden treasures on a highly visible stage. It is evident that this can be done only in ways which correspond to the prominence of the surroundings; 97

HUMBOLDT'S VIRTUAL WUNDERKAMMER

great renewed efforts are certainly required to master this challenge. But this task can have a far-reaching influence on the university and its members, improving not only its public standing but opening also new fields for research and education. 3.3 Some questions which have a prominent place in current discourse will gather additional weight if brought into the context of the opportunities opened up if there is indeed a new Stadtschloß. This applies in particular to the array of problems discussed under the heading "Public Understanding of Science and Humanities", specifically, in the context at hand, "Knowledge Transmission by Exhibitions". The Sammlungsprojekt at the HelmholtzZentrum has focused on this topic, taking advantage of contacts and discussions caused by the "Theatrum" exhibition, and bringing together, in April 2002, a platform for a systematic treatment of the topic. Among the participants where scientists and custodians, artists and architects, exhibition critics and scenographers. In spite of considerable reservations, the workshop became the scene of intense and even heated discussions. It came as no surprise then that very little could be agreed upon, except the consensual statement that a systematic and comparative study of exhibitions as a tool for knowledge transmission is blatantly missing, that there is not yet even a basis to build on. W e want to begin such a systematic study at the Helmholtz-Zentrum, with the help of as many people and fields of expertise as possible. W e hope to display the results one day in the new Stadtschloß.

98

Günther Schauerte / Monika

Hagedorn-Saupe

The Internet Portal "Euromuse" - a Network of European Art Museums Günther Schauerte introduces the internet portal "euromuse". When the ideas about closer cooperation between libraries, museums, and archives had come up some time ago and had also gained ground in the "Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz", one of the possibilities envisaged was to build on internet network of national museums, along the model of the already existing "GABRIEL" ("Gateway and Bridge to European Libraries") of CENL (The Conference of the European National Librarians). A somewhat comparable project is the "Eurogallery" effort initiated by the National Gallery London 1 Hct!.c