Sponsors of the National Initiative
The Getty Art History Information Program
The Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP), one of six operating programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, seeks to make art-historical information more accessible to scholars and researchers through the use of advanced computer technology. It does so by promoting common perspectives and standards among international institutions and organizations on projects in four general areas: working to affect policies that will enhance access to electronic information; coordinating vocabularies to facilitate consistent data entry and retrieval; providing bibliographic services; and assembling art historical databases. Among AHIP’s projects are the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, the Art Information Task Force, the Image and Information Standards Initiative, the Bibliography of the History of Art, the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, the Provenance Documentation Collaborative, the Witt Computer Index, the Union List of Artist Names, and the Thesaurus of Geographic Names. The Getty Art History Information Program, Director, Eleanor Fink, 401 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1100, Santa Monica, California 90401-1455, (310) 395-1025, ext 1164, (310) 451-5570 fax, e-mail: efink@getty.edu
The American Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private non-profit federation of 52 national scholarly organizations. The purpose of the Council, as set forth in its constitution, is “the advancement of humanistic studies and the maintenance and strengthening of relations among the national societies devoted to such studies.” Included in the program of the Council are awards to individual scholars to advance research in the humanities and humanistic aspects of the social sciences, support for international scholarly research and exchanges; activities concerned with the identification of present and future needs of humanistic scholarship, and planning and development to meet these needs; and organizational functions. In addition, the Council has fiscal and administrative oversight for the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which administers the Fulbright program. Organized in 1919 and incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1924, the ACLS was granted a federal charter through the United States Congress in 1982. The American Council of Learned Societies, President, Stanley Katz, 228 East 45th Street, New York, NY 10017-3398, (212) 697-1505, (212) 948-8058 fax, e-mail: snkatz@pucc.princeton.edu
The Coalition for Networked Information
The Coalition for Networked Information was founded in March 1990 to help realize the promise of advanced networks and high-performance computing for information access and delivery. The Coalition was established by three associations: The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), CAUSE and EDUCOM. ARL is an association promoting equitable access and effective use of recorded knowledge supporting teaching, research and scholarship. CAUSE and EDUCOM are dedicated to introducing, using and managing information technology and related sources in research in general and higher education. The Coalition for Networked Information promotes the creation of access to information resources in networked environments in order to enrich scholarship and enhance intellectual productivity.
A Task Force of institutions and organizations able and willing to contribute resources and attention to the mission of the Coalition was created in 1990 and continues to grow. This Task Force now provides a common vehicle by which nearly 170 institutions and organizations pursue a shared vision of information management and how it must change in the 1990s to meet the social, educational and economic opportunities and challenges of the 21st century. Members of the Task Force include higher education institutions, publishers, network service providers, computer hardware, software, and systems companies, library networks and organizations, and public and state libraries. The Coalition for Networked Information, Executive Director, Paul Evan Peters, 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 232-2466, (202) 462-7849 fax, e-mail: paul@cni.org