CULTURAL HERITAGE INITIATIVE FOR COMMUNITY OUTREACH (CHICO)
Community Networking Conference, Taos New Mexico, May 14-17, 1996
C. Olivia Frost
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
School of Information
In the short span of a few years, we have witnessed enormous progress in
our ability to provide access to multi-media documents in a distributed
information environment. The revolution in the information access and dissemination
resulting from digitization and networking is creating new opportunities
on both the production and consumption side of information and knowledge.
The changes bring with them the opportunity for individuals to create and
publish multimedia documents and to share cultural heritage materials with
a world-wide audience on a scale that has been heretofore unprecedented.
Now diverse communities can be enabled to capture and share their culture
in integrated media formats (text, image, animation, video, audio, hyperlinking,
and computer codes). At the same time educational institutions can draw
more heavily on primary sources available over the Internet to enrich learning
and cultural appreciation. This paper describes an initiative, the Cultural
Heritage Initiative for Community Outreach (CHICO), which is based at the
University of Michigan School of Information (SI), and seeks to expand the
reach of cultural heritage materials through the use of digital and collaboration
technology.
Goals and Objectives
The larger goal of CHICO is to develop a model program to prepare information
professionals and other knowledge workers who can play key roles in making
cultural heritage materials accessible to a broad array of audiences.
The CHICO initiative is creating partnerships between SI, University of
Michigan (UM) colleagues in the arts and humanities, and local museums and
schools to develop pilot projects. These projects design, implement, and
evaluate systems and services which utilize information and collaboration
technology to increase and enhance accessibility to cultural heritage materials.
The pilot programs provide cultural outreach services to the Michigan and
larger communities, and help define models of future-oriented service for
information professionals.
Drawing upon the existing curricular strengths at SI, CHICO also creates
a knowledge base needed to prepare professionals in creating, sharing, and
providing "anytime/anyplace" access to cultural heritage materials.
The CHICO initiative is part of the UM School of Information's CRISTAL-ED
Project - Coalition on Reinventing Education for the Information and Library
Professionals of the 21st Century, which is supported by the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation.
CHICO provides students with the opportunities to work with and test key
information and collaboration technologies which can enhance and broaden
access to cultural heritage materials. However, our emphasis is not only
on the design and deployment of information access tools, but also on the
development of services which publicize, facilitate, and enrich the use
of these tools. In CHICO, students work with professionals in museums, libraries,
archives and other cultural heritage repositories to help design services
to bring the resources of museums to diverse sets of audiences.
CHICO will enable SI to play a leadership role in increasing the presence
of cultural heritage materials in digital libraries. There is also an extraordinary
opportunity to provide multicultural visibility in the content of networked
and digital information, and to enable multicultural audiences to be users
and creators of this material.
New opportunities for access and display of information
The need for educating professionals in cultural outreach becomes apparent
with the recent exponential developments in digital information technology
and the wide-spread dissemination of "anytime/anyplace" information.
With advances in the creation, dissemination, display and retrieval of networked
and digital information, there is now enormous potential to increase the
accessibility of cultural heritage information. Digital technologies make
information independent of distance and time, and it is also possible for
any one person or group of persons to have access to a large body of cultural
heritage materials or ideas, to study them, combine them in new ways, and
make their results available to anyone else.
Information networks are growing at a dazzling pace and providing world-wide
customized access to image, sound, and video materials. Repositories of
cultural heritage materials such as museums can offer tours accessible through
the user's workstation. A student can have access to materials residing
in museums across the world. An instructor can display three-dimensional
views of a sculpture from the classroom. At a public library, senior citizens
and youth groups can listen to and view dances from distant cultures, and
see images of cultural artifacts from these areas.
New opportunities for creation and sharing of artistic works
In addition to enhancing access to materials, emerging information technologies
have the potential to change the way in which artists create and share their
works. "Artists" can include both a recognized painter or sculptor,
as well as a school child who has a story to tell and wants to share it
with friends. Individuals can not only gain access to the work of others,
but can also be authors, artists, and creators of materials themselves.
Technologies provide interactive and collaborative access allowing individuals
to communicate and interact with another, and can facilitate and encourage
cultural dialog; for example, through online discussions that encourage
cross-cultural understanding.
With the vast array of multimedia materials available from multicultural
sources, and the potential to bring these resources to communities who have
been under-served, the CHICO project enables SI to play a leadership role
in providing multicultural dimensions to the content of networked and digital
information, and in bringing the opportunity for multicultural audiences
to be users and creators of this material.
New information technologies pose challenges and opportunities for those
who hope for wider access to humanities and arts information. In making
cultural resources and information broadly accessible, some interesting
questions emerge: What will be the technical infrastructure, the content,
the retrieval and browsing mechanisms needed to facilitate this access?
How can this kind of accessibility affect the ways in which users interact
with, share, learn from, and create cultural heritage materials? What will
be the best vehicles and venues for this interaction to take place? Some
of these questions are addressed in CHICO pilot projects.
Pilot Projects
Pilot projects in CHICO design, implement, and evaluate systems and services
to increase access to cultural heritage materials. These pilot programs
provide:
· internships and "living laboratories" for SI students
· research projects for SI and other faculty
· services to communities who provide and use cultural heritage materials
· test sites for models of future-oriented information services
In these projects, UM SI students work with professionals in schools, museums,
libraries, archives and other cultural heritage repositories. For example,
services are being developed to bring the resources of museums to diverse
sets of audiences, including K-12 students and community centers.
Projects in music and the arts provide middle and high school students with
access to resources that will enhance the learning and creative experiences.
The projects incorporate visual images, sound, and video to enrich museum
visits, classroom instruction, and independent research. By linking remote
locations to primary repositories and changing the nature of local site
visits through heightened interactivity, CHICO will redefine the cultural
heritage experience for many within its community. Current projects are
described below.
Music Heritage Network
In partnership with the UM School of Music and School of Art, CHICO is creating
a digital collection of musical instruments from diverse cultures and times.
The Music Heritage Network (MHN) is a resource which provides a virtual
tour of the collection as well as an electronic Teachers' Forum.
The Music Heritage Network has as its nucleus the Stearns Collection of
Musical Instruments, an internationally known collection of over 2,200 musical
instruments located at the University of Michigan School of Music. The
collection had its origins in 1899 and is considered by museum professionals
to be one of the top five musical instrument collections in North America.
The Stearns Collection is open to the public, but as is typical of museums,
is only able to make a portion of its collection available to the public
on display. By creating a digital version of the collection, CHICO is
providing access to a large number of instruments through image, sound,
and video. In addition to viewing the instruments, visitors can also experience
how the instruments sound, and see how they would be played in a performance.
The MHN project builds upon the Stearns collection and will be enriched
by contributions from diverse musical and scholarly sources throughout
the world. Plans are underway to involve local performance groups, and to
include material from scholars who are expert in the instruments in the
collection. The project is intended to introduce users to more than music;
it is using musical instruments as an entry point to explore the larger
cultural context of which the instruments are a part, and to look at such
issues as music and identity, creative boundaries, and cultural border
crossings.
The MHN seeks to encourage interest among a broad community of users in
the role of musical instruments as an integral part of culture, to create
a digital resource that is accessible in many contexts by diverse users,
and to play a role in multicultural education and outreach using multimedia
technologies.
The Web site will include information about specific musical instruments
(including photographic images, sound, and video demonstrating performance
technique), as well as cultural information about the context in which the
instrument was used, historical information about its role in diverse communities
and throughout time, and an interactive forum for sharing ideas with other
users.
The instruments in the collection have significance beyond their purely
musical value. Some instruments have artistic and spiritual importance,
such as the Persian tanbur decorated with inlaid ivory, a Northwest Coast
Native America rattle shaped like a killer whale, and the Indonesian gamelan,
designed with attention to its organic unity.
Other instruments offer insight into the roots of contemporary musical instruments.
For example, the orchestral timpani has links to Turkish jannisary bands,
while the origins of the oboe can be found in the Middle Eastern zurna.
Other instruments are related to the evolution of the various American cultures;
for example, the precursors of the banjo, xylophone, and snare drums are
found in the African-American community, and their roots can be traced to
African instruments. Some instruments, like the theramin, the bucla, and
the moog synthesizer, shed light on the evolution of electronic music technologies
and are related to broader cultural developments; for example, the development
of the theramin in the Soviet Union was an outgrowth, in part, of Lenin's
philosophy of 'electrification' and modernization.
Instruments like the jazzitha and the Arthur Godfrey ukelele have figured
in 20th century American popular culture, while the Gibson mandolins and
guitars speak to the artistic excellence of instrument manufacturers in
the United States. By drawing connections such as these between musical
instruments and their broader cultural significance, the project speaks
to a number of different cultures.
The MHN has broad participation from a number of units on the University
of Michigan campus and other universities. Scholars in Latin American,
Chicano literature and music studies are providing photographic, video and
written material. A UM scholar in ethnomusicology is providing multimedia
materials from his research collection, and will also provide production
facilities such as a video editing suite. Another UM scholar in music education
and music technology is providing expertise in the use of computers in music.
Faculty and students from the School of Art and Design have assisted with
the design of the Web pages.
UM Museum of Art
The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is another local cultural
resource from which CHICO can draw. Together with UMMA staff, CHICO
team members created an interactive online site, called the Interpretation
Project, that allows visitors to participate in the ongoing critical interpretation
of three of the Museum's 19th century paintings.
The glories of 16th and 18th century Venetian painting are brought to life
in "Venetian Paintings and Related Works on Paper," an online
exhibit scheduled to complement a showing of twelve paintings from the Sarah
Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the University of Michigan Museum of Art
from September 12, 1996 to January 12, 1997. The online exhibit will also
feature a generous selection of period drawings and prints selected from
the museum's own permanent collection as well as rare book and manuscript
materials loaned from the University Library's Special Collections Division.
Visitors will be treated to a unique recreation of an actual gallery experience
and will have their understanding of the artwork augmented by several essays
about the collection sources and Venetian art that will only be available
at the website. Digital images and related contextual materials will be
used by students in local K-12 schools to enhance art appreciation.
In this project, curators and docents from the UM Museum of Art are working
with CHICO team members to develop the digital resource for the exhibit.
The UMMA resource will be complemented by a site at the UM History of
Art Department which will feature actual Venetian views, streetscapes, palaces,
and squares which viewers can browse in multiple ways.
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, located on the UM campus, is another local
collection whose mission includes outreach to diverse audiences. In partnership
with the Kelsey Museum, CHICO is creating a digital exhibit to chronicle
Francis Kelsey's near East Expedition of 1919-1920. Visitors to the online
exhibit can experience the stops made by Kelsey and his colleagues to points
of interest across Europe and the Near East. The online resource will also
include contextual materials which supplement the visual images, and will
also be designed for use in K-12 classroom settings.
Middle and High School Partnerships
CHICO team members are working with teachers, media specialists, and students
from selected high schools and middle schools in Ann Arbor to use resources
developed from the Stearns, Kelsey and Museum of Art projects, supplemented
by additional Web materials, to provide primary resources in the arts and
humanities for learning.
The CHICO team also provides assistance in using the Internet to facilitate
sharing and communication among students with their peers at different sites.
CHICO is helping students in local schools set up an electronic exchange,
by taking advantage of free software, called The Chalkboard, which can
facilitate a WWW Board to be used for remote collaboration. Students can
set up cultural heritage Web pages which can be shared with students in
other Web sites.
For example, one writing teacher is planning an assignment in which students
will set up a webpage of "What my cultural history means to me".
A threaded webpage set up at another school will allow students to respond
to each others' work, and can include written as well as visual art creations.
We hope that this opportunity of seeing their own multimedia work on the
Internet will stimulate the students' creativity and allow them to share
their work with faraway peers. For example, students from Ann Arbor area
schools are establishing an electronic cultural exchange with students from
a sister Kellogg project in the Pueblo community of Taos, New Mexico.
Ann Arbor District Library
Librarians from the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) are working with CHICO
team members to showcase CHICO materials and related resources in the arts
and the humanities, and to coordinate these with related materials from
the AADL humanities collections.
Tapping the myriad resources of the Ann Arbor District Library, the AADL
Arts Information Gateway is an innovative service designed to provide local
public library patrons with immediate access to web- based art collections,
museum exhibitions, and community- based arts information resources. The
resource will provide direct links to well known works of art and a variety
of connections to sites featuring art resources in the local community.
Links to the world outside will take patrons to renowned art, archaeology,
and history museums; inside online museum galleries for special exhibitions;
and to electronic journals, image collections; and artists' works in progress.
In addition, patrons' access to the library's own rich holdings will be
enhanced by online access to the library's art rental program, exhibits
schedule, specialized bibliographies, image collections, and a host of information
on local arts organizations. Developed with public librarians for the public
library audience, the AADL Arts Information Gateway will provide a convenient
first step for library patrons interested in exploring both the world around
them and the wealth of art resources within the library.
Flint Public Library and Community Networking Initiative
The Community Networking Initiative is an experimental Community and Civic
Network in the Flint, Michigan area. This initiative is creating a need-centered
digital community model based on emerging information technologies. The
project provides libraries with connectivity to the Internet and will be
utilized in CHICO to provide access to cultural heritage materials. The
Flint Public Library is already positioned with a training center of twenty
new workstations with access to the World Wide Web and a training program
for librarians. The Library will be a site for public access, and will
include materials from the Flint area, for example, drawing on their resources
on blues music.
New Learning Models
CHICO is providing new models of learning that distribute the responsibility
for education beyond the teachers and the boundaries of schools and that
promote collaboration among people and resources in local communities.
For example, museum visits can provide far more than "one-time"
field trips for a short duration. With access to digital collections of
local museums, students can develop background knowledge needed to understand
the exhibits, and pursue their own inquiries over time. This provides an
opportunity for students to develop and enhance their own understanding
and appreciation of the art works, to ask and respond to questions in a
collaborative setting, to create their own art and their own understanding
and learning about art, and to present their accomplishments to others.
Our model provides students with remote access to museum exhibits so that
students can view museum artifacts via digital connections like the World
Wide Web. On-line connections can also provide students with access to
museum staff to ask questions or correspond about projects. Use of these
tools allows students to prepare for the visit beforehand by examining
the collections, becoming familiar with the museum layout, and identifying
exhibits of particular interest for their visit. Before and after the visit,
students can examine art historically and conceptually, review images,
compare and discuss information, and collect images and information in
their own files and projects.
Project activities are integrated into the fabric of the community. Parents
have an opportunity to experience the potential of the high technology
tools now available for their children. The network of community organizations
participating in this project reach a diverse spectrum of the local population,
and provide public access to project resources and training at little to
no cost for the user. For example, access to the Internet is available
at the public library and at local museums.
Use of Collaboration Technology to Facilitate Creation and Sharing of Knowledge
Present school curricula rely heavily upon publisher-supplied information
sources. In our learning model, students themselves can become publishers
in digital-library environments. Tools enable students to publish and
share and disseminate products of their academic work with each other as
well as with humanities specialists as well as peers; for example, through
a gallery exhibit of artistic creations. Students and teachers can create
project artifacts which can be published in the system, and become an integral
part of its collections. We are providing computer-based tools that make
it easy for student authors to publish their research findings and artistic
creations and link their contributions to related works.
Other tools can also enable teachers to collaborate with their peers and
exchange ideas on instructional strategy. For example, CUSee Me, and other
tools can be used to communicate with learning partners in the local and
external community - other students, teachers, artists. Through these contacts,
students can locate information, and share data and creations. Our model
can eventually also find and schedule appointments with human mentors who
will use these same tools for collaboration. Teachers can also use these
same tools in order to collaborate with fellow teachers and with teaching
mentors.
Broadening the Learning Community
We are developing a model which will build a community of learners and
an extended resource base and support network of mentors and domain specialists.
Resource specialists include K-12 media specialists, public and academic
librarians, museum curators, and archivists. Domain specialists include
artists, and faculty from the arts and humanities. Mentors will include
parents, community leaders, and members of the domain and resource specialist
community. This network will help give a human face to subject content,
provide role models for career planning, and personalized assistance in
problem-solving. Mentoring relationships can distribute responsibility for
teaching and augment schools by providing more experts in classrooms.
We are using collaboration technology to allow members of the community
to communicate with each other in an anyplace-anytime mode. This will help
students to interact with others interested in and involved in the subject
content they are learning. It also helps provide mentors beyond the classroom,
and will assist students to communicate with peers who are engaged in related
project learning.
Conclusion
This paper has described an initiative which seeks to expand the reach of
cultural heritage materials through the use of digital and collaboration
technology. Through a partnership involving K-12 teachers and media specialists,
museum curators and docents, librarians and archival specialists, staff
from the University Press, and faculty from a variety of specialties in
the humanities and information professions, the CHICO initiative has been
able to launch pilot projects which identify and develop resources which
can enhance the learning and appreciation of the arts, and extend learning
far beyond the classroom, and which facilitate the exchange of ideas and
creativity within and among individuals and groups.
Acknowledgements: The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions
of Michelle Miller, M. Sam Cronk, and Bradley Taylor in the preparation
of this paper.
Contact Information:
C. Olivia Frost
University of Michigan
School of Information
304 West Hall
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1092
WWW: http://www.si.umich.edu
Phone: 313 763-2285
Fax: 313 764-2475
E-mail: cfrost@umich.edu
Key words: Cultural heritage, Community outreach, Museums, Libraries,
Library Education