ADAM: Bits and Pieces

tony gill

ADAM: Bits and Pieces

Tony Gill presents a few bits and pieces of news regarding the ADAM project which was featured in issue 3 of Ariadne.

Funding for Networked Resource Discovery & Delivery System

The ADAM project has recently been awarded additional funding to procure a database system for the ADAM Service, up to a maximum of 30,000 GBP, following a bid to the Information Services Sub Committee (ISSC) of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). This will provide a number of significant benefits:

The ability to more accurately describe complex resources (e.g. web sites, individual web pages etc.) and the relationships between them, both to enhance information retrieval for the user and to streamline the cataloguing process for the Project Team
Better compatibility with more of the emerging standards for describing Internet resources
More comprehensive database management features
The facility for storing and linking thesauri, such as the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, which will be used as a searching aid
The facility for storing reviews of network resources, submitted by end users
Provide the ability to store content such as web pages, images and sounds, in addition to the descriptive catalogue records. This will allow the system to be used for content delivery, and to experiment with a combination of full-text retrieval (like Alta Vista) and catalogue indexing.
provide a specification and a software tool that may prove to be of value to a number of eLib Projects and other initiatives.

Discussion about the specifications for this system will be taking place on the COUSNS mailing list shortly; should you wish to contribute, please subscribe to this list. Details can be found at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists-a-e/cousns/

Arts & Humanities Data Service: Visual Arts Service Provider

The VADS (Visual Arts Data Service) Partnership, a subset of the ADAM Consortium consisting of the Surrey Institute of Art & Design, the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Glasgow School of Art and the University of the West of England, has been awarded funding to host the Visual Arts Data Service for the Arts & Humanities Data Service, following a response to the recent call for proposals in JISC Circular ⁵⁄₉₆.

AHDS Web pages: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/projects/ahds/top.html
JISC Circular ⁵⁄₉₆ on the Web: http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/jisc/pub/c5_96.html

ADAM presentation at CHArt 1996

Professor Chris Bailey and Tony Gill will be giving a joint presentation at the annual conference of Computers and the History of Art (CHArt), to be held at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London on the 5th & 6th of December 1996. Our presentation (currently timetabled for 5th Dec although this is subject to change) will cover progress to date on the ADAM Project and the results of our recent survey of potential users.

CHArt 1996 has Web pages at: http://www.hart.bbk.ac.uk/chart/chart96.html