This page introduces the Groups of the International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-CIDOC ). (Previously known as "Working Groups", these were renamed "Groups" at the Nuremberg conference in 1997.)
CIDOC members are welcome to join one or more of the Groups, by contacting the representatives noted below. If you have comments on the previous work or future plans of the groups or suggestions for a new group, please get in touch with the person named as contact for each group, or any member of the CIDOC Board.
Contact: Henrik Jarl Hansen.
The Archaeological Sites Group is working with national sites and monuments organisations and the Council of Europe in the development of standards for site documentation.
A Draft international core data standard for archaeological sites and monuments was published in June 1995 and was accessible on-line although it is temporarily unavailable at present. Further information about the standard is available in a summary, while additional background and a discussion of the role of the work in a European context is described in an article by Dominique Guillot and Henrik Jarl Hansen, A European core data standard for archaeological sites and monuments [Also temporarily unavailable]. Comments should be sent to Henrik Jarl Hansen.
Details are available of the Survey of national archaeological site records
For additional information about the Archaeological Sites Group, see its separate Web pages, prepared by Henrik Jarl Hansen, the National Museum, Denmark. These include minutes of recent meetings. See the 1996 CIDOC Newsletter (volume 7) for more information.
Contact: Chair: Martin Doerr (martin@ics.forth.gr)
Over many years, CIDOC and the CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group (DSWG) have engaged in the creation of a general data model for museums, with a particular focus on information interchange. This work resulted in the production of the CIDOC Relational Data Model in 1994. At the interim meeting in March 1996 in Crete, the DSWG decided to adopt an object-oriented approach in order to benefit from its expressive power and extensibility in dealing with the diversity and complexity of museum data structures. This effort resulted in 1999 in the first complete edition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), Version 2.0, a result of intensive voluntary work of various contributors. To fully exploit the potential of the CRM for enabling information interchange and integration in the museum community and beyond, CIDOC decided to submit the CRM to ISO for standardization. In August 2000, with the acceptance of the CIDOC CRM by ISO as work item ISO/AWI 21127, CIDOC founded the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group, which is open also to non-CIDOC members, with the objective of collaborating with ISO as representative of the interested user community. CIDOC CRM version 3.2.1 has been accepted in fall 2002 as ISO/CD 21127. Version 3.4.6 is being proposed as Draft International Standard (DIS)in October 2003.
For additional information about the Conceptual Reference Model Special Interest Group, see its separate Web page
Contact: Harald Kraemer.
The Contemporary Art Group was proposed in 1994 and confirmed in 1995.
Minutes of the meeting in St. Petersburg, September 2003
Regine Scheffel, 2003-10-18
During the discussion about future topics that should be tackled by CIDOC, most of those attending the meeting of the Documentation Standards Group expressed their interest in digital preservation. In the past many CIDOC members have been of the opinion that this subject should be treated by libraries and archives with their more powerful infrastructure. However, the participants now thought that the time has come for CIDOC to deal with the problems of digital preservation for the museum sector, reflecting the work being done by libraries and archives. The publication of the UNESCO Draft Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage and the accompanying Guidelines certainly have their part in this process of rethinking the CIDOC position.
At the Closing Plenary Session the CIDOC Digital Preservation Group was established.
The CIDOC Digital Preservation Group has been created in order to initiate discussion about all subjects related to long term preservation of digital objects within ICOM and museums.
Until the regular election of group chairs during the CIDOC Conference taking place within the ICOM General Conference 2004 in Seoul, the work of the group will be coordinated by:
Chair: Regine Scheffel (scheffel@bum.htwk-leipzig.de)
Vice-Chair: Stephen Stead (steads@paveprime.com).
Stephen Stead has taken over the responsibility of representing the group at the next conference making sure that the election of chair and vice-chair for a period of three years will take place.
The members present at the first meeting decided that communication and eventual decisions or elections will be done by mail. Martin Doerr offered the use of the CRM mailing list, hosted at ICS Forth, Crete, as a means of communication. The majority of the members present agreed to this.
The CIDOC Digital Preservation Group will be presented on the CIDOC website. An introduction to the issues is given in Regine Scheffel's PowerPoint presentation Sustainability in museum documentation (854 kB), given at the CIDOC 2003 conference.
The group lives by its member's activities, so input is warmly welcome!
Regine ScheffelContacts Chair: Nicholas Crofts (nickcrofts@yahoo.com)
Vice-Chair, Terminology Projects: Matthew Stiff (matthew.stiff@leander.demon.co.uk
Vice-Chair, Object-oriented Model: Ifigenia Dionissiadou (ifi@benaki.gr).
This group is a merger of two earlier groups: the Data and Terminology Working Group and the Data Model Working Group.
The Group has produced the International Guidelines for Museum Object Information, published in June 1995. This is a description of the Information Categories that can be used when developing records about the objects in museum collections. The Guidelines can be adopted by an individual museum, national documentation organization, or system developer, as the basis for a working museum documentation system. Additional information about this project is available in a summary or from Alice Grant.
The terminology work includes reviews of terminology resources.
The Group has published a Terminology control bibliography (1990) and a Directory of Thesauri for Object Names (1994).
The data model work includes developing a theoretical data model, preparing publications and training workshops concerning the model and advising other projects about the application of the model.
The files making up the data model itself are available on-line and in print (updated 1995), but this model has largely been superseded by the Conceptual Reference Model.
The Group has also issued a Data modelling bibliography, published in 1994 and compiled by Jacqueline Zak and Linda Kincheloe (Getty Conservation Institute), with the help of Pat Barnett, Janet Goman and George Hickman.
The Documentation Standards Group has prepared a Statement of principles of museum documentation. The current draft is available at http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/cidoc-members/Public/principles1.pdf. It is necessary to register (free) as a SmartGroups user in order to read this file.
For additional information about the Documentation Standards Group, see its separate Web page, with a report on recent meetings. See the 1996 CIDOC Newsletter (volume 7) for more information. [December 1997]
Penelope Theologi-Gouti, Co Chair CIDOC/Ethno Group
During this time the CIDOC / ETHNO GROUP has worked on two different projects:
Handbook of classification systems used by ethno museums
Ethno Group has published the results of the survey, started in September 1996, in English and French. The publication contains an analysis of the results and a presentation of the classification systems by country and museum and was funded by CIDOC and the Hellenic National Committee of ICOM. It will be sent to the members, National Coordinators etc together with the questionnaire of the second project at the beginning of September.
Multilingual dictionary of the international core data standards for ethnology/ethnography
The group has worked to develop a questionnaire in order to survey the implementation and translation of the International core data standard for ethnology/ethnography (the first publication of the group 1996) in museums worldwide. The group met in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany from 21st to 24th of May 2000 in order to discuss the proposed questionnaire for the survey and decide on its final version as well as to review the work schedule of the project, which is the following:
The Group will soon put all its documents and publication on the CIDOC Web site.
The Ethno Group is still open to new memberships and hope that new members from other countries will join our future activities. Those who are interested in our work please contact me.
Contact: Claire Constans, Chair, Fax +33 1 30 84 76 48.
The Iconography Group is examining the available data standards and classification schemes for iconography, and evaluating the need for new resources. See the 1996 CIDOC Newsletter (volume 7) for more information.
Contact: Cary Karp.
The Internet Group was also confirmed in 1995. It is one of a number of Internet initiatives being pursued by the Committee.
Contact: Dr. Ann Elizabeth Borda
Head of Collections Multimedia
Science Museum
LONDON SW7 2DD
United Kingdom
Tel:: +44 (0)20 7942 4150
Fax: +44 (0)20 7942 4112
Email: a.borda@nmsi.ac.uk
The Multimedia Group is concerned with improving communication within the museum community about multimedia technologies and applications, formulating guidelines on the use of multimedia and representing the interests of museums with regard to multimedia. It has published a first public version of Introduction to multimedia in museums and has developed a set of Criteria for the evaluation of heritage multimedia (draft version). - further information from Jennifer Trant.
Members of the group have also prepared Requirements for multimedia authoring tools : a workshop paper, by Jan Van der Starre and Ann Borda, June 2001 (revised December 2002) and they draw attention to two papers from the Science Museum, London: Requirements for all Science Museum computer exhibits by Joe Cutting, 2003, and Guidelines for multimedia development : a discussion document, by Ann Borda (Revised: January 2003, with further amendments: February 2004. - .pdf, 217kB). Guidelines for multimedia development is also available in Microsoft Word format (180kB).
Contact: Monika Hagedorn-Saupe.
The Museum Information Centres Group represents the interests of museum information services, including arranging seminars about museum libraries and bibliographic collections. See the 1996 CIDOC Newsletter (volume 7) for more information.
The group has recently produced an updated directory of museum information centres throughout the world. - [November 2000]
The CIDOC Services Group developed publications and other services for members. It published fact sheets on Registration step by step: when an object enters the museum (CIDOC Fact Sheet 1) and Labelling and marking objects (CIDOC Fact Sheet 2). These are available in printed versions (in a number of languages) and on-line. See the 1996 CIDOC Newsletter (volume 7) for more information.
As no new fact sheets or other publications have been produced by other Groups for some time, the Services Group decided in 1999 that it should be disbanded, though some of its members were willing to be available "on standby" should the need arise in future for work of this kind.
http://cidoc.icom.museum/wg1.htm
Revised / Dernière mise à jour: 2005-06-13 20:12.
Now maintained by / Maintenant entretenu par: Leonard Will
Link to / Passerelle vers CIDOC home page / la page d'accueil du CIDOC or ICOM home page / la page d'accueil de l'ICOM
© The International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums / Comité international pour la documentation du Conseil international des musées (ICOM-CIDOC), 1997-2005