Executive Summary

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) promotes the advancement of expert knowledge of materials and technologies to conserve and preserve global cultural heritage. Its investments in research, education, and knowledge-sharing programs help position the field to address its current and future needs.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Despite its broad experience and reach, FAIC has found it difficult to identify the investments needed to support the use of information technology in the discipline. Conservation’s digital landscape – the digital information, technologies, support infrastructures and behaviors that conservation professionals rely on to conduct their work – is complicated, the field’s capacity to harness the potential of this environment is poorly understood.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 In 2014, FAIC began an effort to address this problem. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Getty Foundation and Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the organization conducted a yearlong series of activities (research, a community survey, discussion forums, interviews, and an analysis of online resources) to map the digital landscape as it exists today, and to identify strategic investments in the environment that will serve the community and help it flourish as a profession.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 To that end, FAIC enlisted the aid of hundreds of conservation and allied professionals to identify:

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 4
How those in the profession create, use, and manage digital resources for their work
The problems they encounter in these activities
Their perspectives on why these problems exist
Their ideas on how these problems might be overcome

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 1 This community input was used to identify the high-level issues that account for the current state of conservation’s digital landscape, and to outline the challenges that must be overcome to make this landscape more serviceable for the profession. Key issues emerged in six distinct areas:

Leadership

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 The field lacks coordinated leadership to envision, propose, track, and support digital initiatives across the profession. Without this leadership, the digital landscape of the profession will continue to develop in a scatter-shot fashion, and the inability to identify and make sense of the abundance of online resources will continue to plague the field.

The visibility of the profession

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 4 Conservation professionals have a low profile in cultural heritage institutions and with the public. Senior administrators in cultural institutions often do not recognize the value that conservation brings to their institutional mission, and fail to include conservators in leadership teams where they could bring that value to the fore.

The state of the field’s digital content

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 3 Conservation’s knowledge base is steeped in an “information amalgam” of complicated, cumulative, and unstructured data that is hard to access in a digital environment. The field lacks the information infrastructures (e.g., standards, workflows, systems, repositories, etc.) necessary to adequately use, share, and preserve its information online.

Resources

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Cultural institutions often underestimate or minimize the information and technology needs of conservators, failing to incorporate conservation departments into institution-wide strategies for IT. The field is also adversely affected by recent changes in funder strategies that have reduced support in the digital sphere. New models of resource building that could fund and sustain digital efforts are absent from the profession.

Policies

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 4 The conservation community’s policies and practices are outdated and do not address digital issues that now are routine across the conservation profession. Policies about transparency, collaboration, and sharing of digital resources – which are necessary for effective use of the online environment – are too-frequently viewed with apprehension by the community.

Training

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 4 Conservation professionals create large numbers of digital resources, but lack the skills needed to effectively use, manipulate, and engage with these resources in the digital realm. Digital competencies for the profession have not been established, and current methods of professional training and professional development are inadequate for initial digital skills acquisition and continuing education in this arena.
The report addresses the challenges in each of these areas in more detail, and offers short-, mid-, and long-term recommendations to help address them. The recommendations suggest a way forward that will lead to greater efficiencies, more reliable knowledge bases, and increased cooperation and collaboration within the profession and with its allied communities. Implementing these recommendations will require effort at all levels of the profession, but will result in a more functional, robust, and thriving digital landscape for the field.

Comments

1 Comment on the whole Page

Foekje September 21, 2015 at 9:39 pm

Great report!

I would just like to suggest to include a brief overview of the recommendations in the executive summary. The recommendations are extremely useful and are now somewhat buried in the report. A list in the appendix also feels a bit like an after thought. Why not put this in the executive summary!

Reply to Foekje

Michelle Facini September 8, 2015 at 8:38 pm

“problems” has a negative connotation- perhaps “issues” as an alternate term.

Reply to Michelle Facini
1. Fletcher Durant September 16, 2015 at 7:52 pm
  
  Perhaps “barriers”?
  
  Reply to Fletcher Durant
Barbara Reeve September 25, 2015 at 3:44 am

Suggest ‘challenges / opportunities’ or ‘challenges and opportunities’ instead of ‘problems / issues / barriers.

Dot point 4 would then become “Their ideas on how the challenges can be met (or overcome) and the opportunities exploited.”

Reply to Barbara Reeve
Dale Kronkright September 25, 2015 at 8:42 pm

Suggest adding “share and anaylze” to “create, use and manage digital resources for their work.” Perhaps the authors felt that sharing is implied in use of digital resources and there are good arguments for keeping this initial bullet outline simple. But the great promise of digital information is digital research and multi-media sharing- quantification and imaging of damage, deterioration, fabrication and treatment data- which can help conservators understand both the rates of deterioration of heritage materials and the effectiveness of our preventive and treatment practices at actually slowing those rates.

Reply to Dale Kronkright

1 Comment on paragraph 6

Suzanne Davis September 23, 2015 at 12:50 pm

Conservators are characterized in a negative and passive light in this section and in the body of the report. If a rewrite is possible, language could highlight positive opportunities for growth instead of focusing on perceived negative attributes.

Reply to Suzanne Davis

0 Comments on paragraph 7

4 Comments on paragraph 8

Kristin deGhetaldi September 9, 2015 at 5:42 am

Unfortunately this can no longer be something that the field takes issue with when we have the ability to blog, access social media, create websites/webexhibits, and participate in other digital-based projects. By moving forward in the digital landscape we be default become increasingly more visible, both to our institutional colleagues as well as the general public. The membership should take this into consideration when discussing potential solutions for combatting our comparatively “low profile.”

Reply to Kristin deGhetaldi
Suzanne Davis September 23, 2015 at 1:04 pm

For example, here. What about, “Conservators have an unparalleled opportunity to capitalize on the recent, outward-looking direction in cultural heritage institutions and can increase their profile both within institutions and with the public. They can improve senior-administrators’ understanding of the role of conservation in institutions, in part by serving on leadership teams, and in part by understanding and advocating for the mission-critical nature of their work.” Or something more positive and proactive.

Throughout the report, conservators are characterized as ill-educated, under-skilled, and passive, waiting for departments to “give” them needed resources as handouts. It makes for a demoralizing read. I’d try to be more sensitive to the audience.

If the report MUST make blanket negative statements such as, “Senior administrators often do not recognize the value that conservation brings to their institutional mission…” then please support them with some kind of evidence. Because that statement is decidedly untrue where I work. Maybe survey respondents said this – if so, lead with that.

Reply to Suzanne Davis
Barbara Reeve September 25, 2015 at 3:59 am

I agree 100% with the comment made by Suzanne Davis. Conservation managers must take responsibility for training themselves, their staff, and their student interns to see themselves as enablers and facilitators within the museum / gallery / heritage site context. We are not a bunch of shy teenage male and female wallflowers at a high school mixer waiting to be asked to dance .

Once conservators view themselves as enablers and facilitators (helping others to achieve preservation, exhibiton, and access goals for the collections and sites they manage) it is a short step to getting their colleagues to view them in this light. A good start is the phase ‘Yes – I can help you achieve that.’ rather than ‘No – you can’t do that.’

We are conservators – masters of lateral thinking – it is up to us to find safe ways of making things happen.

Reply to Barbara Reeve
Peter D Verheyen September 29, 2015 at 2:17 pm

Total agreement with Suzanne Davis. The profession will be as visible as it wants to be. All in field need to be advocates for themselves and their work in the workplace and elsewhere. AIC cannot do this for them.

Reply to Peter D Verheyen

3 Comments on paragraph 9

Peter D Verheyen September 29, 2015 at 2:22 pm

What knowledge base? We are mixing together too many dissimilar resources. What is the digital sphere? This needs to be defined far better. Digital tools are just that tools, with each serving their own purposes. Social media, blogs, websites great for sharing broadly… Treatment databases something else, but who will determine what standards for those (fields, metadata, controlled vocabularies). Access to the literature another thing – look to academic library “institutional repositories, partner, advocate for open access…

Reply to Peter D Verheyen
Neal Stimler October 3, 2015 at 12:59 pm

Back-end and foundational systems are now being built for conservators for documentation, preservation and research. More accurate to say that a suite of tools are emerging for digital conservation.

Gallery Systems – TMS Conservation Studio: http://www.gallerysystems.com/products-and-services/conservation-studio/

Conservation Space: http://www.conservationspace.org/

Binder:

Fino-Radin, Ben. “Open-Sourcing MoMa’s Digital Vault.” Inside/Out A MoMA/MoMA PS1 Blog. May 13, 2015 http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/05/13/open-sourcing-momas-digital-vault/

Reply to Neal Stimler
Emily Tracey October 16, 2015 at 10:13 am

The British Geological Survey is developing a data capture tool using a GIS platform to capture and store all condition and material information for the historic built environment. This tool will also have the capability of ‘linking’ previous information collected on any particular historic site (i.e. stone analysis, previous repairs, plans, elevations, photographs). We are doing this in collaboration with Historic Environment Scotland (previously Historic Scotland). If anyone is interested in speaking with me about this resource I’d be more than happy to tell you more. https://uk.linkedin.com/in/emilyanntracey

Reply to Emily Tracey

0 Comments on paragraph 10

4 Comments on paragraph 11

Michelle Facini September 8, 2015 at 8:50 pm

How is the conservation community separate from the conservation profession that represents modernization? Perhaps wording can be clarified.

Reply to Michelle Facini
Kristin deGhetaldi September 9, 2015 at 5:51 am

This is by far one of the greatest issues that prevents the field from moving forward in a unified and productive manner. AIC will soon be forced to reckon with aspects relating to confidentiality vs. transparency, something that our sister fields have now begun to successfully tackle. In order to become more visible and viable as a profession, it is imperative that we function at reasonable pace within the digital landscape. A major problem that faces the membership is the hundreds of different policies regarding access and transparency that can be encountered in museums, universities, and other cultural institutions. Before we can successfully begin to “fight the good fight” at our home bases, AIC must first draft a policy that is approved by the membership regarding our role within the digital landscape.

Reply to Kristin deGhetaldi
Helen September 24, 2015 at 7:35 pm

[practices] – communication practices?

Reply to Helen
Peter D Verheyen September 29, 2015 at 2:24 pm

??? The digital landscape waits for no one, and that ship has sailed. Policies for what can be shared and not largely determined by institutions that employ practitioners and copyrights that are too often signed away in publication agreements…

Reply to Peter D Verheyen

4 Comments on paragraph 12

Caroline Roberts September 22, 2015 at 7:07 pm

I think that the term ‘digital skills’ needs to be much more clearly defined before we can say that conservators have somehow been left behind in acquiring them. Are we talking about basic software for reporting and documentation? Sharing platforms for group editing and projects? Web platforms for outreach? I can’t think of many colleagues who don’t use such tools already in their day-to-day work. Are we talking more advanced skills? Either way, this point needs clarification.

Reply to Caroline Roberts
1. Helen September 24, 2015 at 7:40 pm
  
  Agreed.
  
  Reply to Helen
Peter D Verheyen September 29, 2015 at 2:26 pm

Major clarification needed, and much of what might be meant is already available via webinars offered by AIC, C2C, academic library organizations and others. There are also tools like Lynda.com for self-paced software training.

Reply to Peter D Verheyen
Neal Stimler October 3, 2015 at 1:10 pm

Conservators often have significant technical expertise in their traditional areas of practice, many having specialized knowledge of tools that have migrated to digital outputs such a x-rays, microscopes and multispectral imaging for example. Conservators have significant skills as well with digital imaging and 3D modelling and scanning techniques. A shift in building new types of skills that impact the entire museum industry, but particularly conservators, is perhaps the focus here with respect to computer coding, hardware and software. This means that conservation training must now actively include ongoing skills development in computer science, digital forensics, digital humanities and media studies.

Reply to Neal Stimler

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