Archives & Museum Informatics (A&MI) is a Pittsburgh‐based consulting firm specializing in assisting archives, museums, libraries, and other cultural organizations in the design and implementation of electronic information and record keeping systems. David Bearman, the president of A&MI and an expert in the field of electronic archival records; Jennifer Trant, a museum information systems specialist; and the other members of the staff serve as consultants to institutions in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia on issues such as the development of electronic metadata requirements to the creation of Z39.50 and Web‐based standards for the exchange of information about museum collections. They organize conferences and training seminars for cultural heritage professionals, edit the journal Archives and Musuem Informatics: Cultural Heritage Informatics Quarterly, and also publish papers and books on application of information technology to the control and interpretation of museum and archival holdings. Archivists, records managers, museum curators, and other information specialists working in the cultural heritage field all need to be familiar with A&MI’s work.
The group’s Web site provides an introduction to the various initiatives and projects sponsored by A&MI; but this reviewer found it somewhat disappointing that the site does not offer a more detailed, substantive discussion of their work with specific institutions or their involvement in the information field. A&MI home page contains links to other pages on upcoming conferences sponsored by the group (the Museums and the Web Conference to be held in Toronto on April 22‐25, 1998 is currently featured), current activities with groups and individual organizations, a catalog of their publications with an online order form, and brief sections on their consulting and training services.
These subsidiary pages give a cursory overview of the group’s many functions, but do not go into any of the theoretical or even practical aspects of their work. This is primarily a promotional site for A&MI’s consulting services and publishing ventures. While practicing professionals and administrators in museums and archives will want to bookmark it, it is not a site to consult for academic research on electronic information systems in cultural heritage environments.
The most useful aspects of the A&MI site from a researcher’s perspective are the bibliographies of writings by David Bearman and Jennifer Trant which contain links to the full text of papers available online. The list of available publications produced by A&MI is also a valuable resource, for many of them are difficult, if not impossible, to purchase through outside retailers or vendors. There are scattered links to other projects and consortia working to develop standards for information systems in museums and related institutions such as the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) <http://www.amn.org/AMICO/> and the Initiative for Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) <http://www.cimi.org>, but these are not organized into any particular order and are mainly included in the group members’ curriculum vitae pages.
Archives and museum studies students and faculty may find little of use in the A&MI beyond its bibliographic links and may want to go directly to the sites for projects such as AMICO and CIMI for more comprehensive information about the activities and of the A&MI group members.
