ARTstor developments and debate continue

I'm not blessed with sufficient time (or factual certainty) to give a full-scale update on ARTstor news at the moment. After I've had a chance to do some fact-finding, I'll be sure to post more. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure this blog had links to the current information available relating to ARTstor.

In my previous ARTstor post, I mentioned plans under development at ARTstor for some increased interoperability, at least with respect to searching other collections from the ARTstor interface(s). I encourage anybody who is interested to review the slides from ARTstor CTO Bill Ying's October 26th presentation at the Digital Library Federation's (DLF) Fall meeting. The slides raise a lot of questions about details, but they serve well to outline the direction ARTstor is heading in.

Also, there's a vigorous discussion running on the Visual Resources Association's VRA-L listserv. I learned some things by participating in it. First, there are a lot of different perspectives that shape how people view ARTstor right now: size of institution, existing image collection resources, past experiences in communication with ARTstor, etc. Second, despite what I'd previously thought, I am hardly the most vocal or intense critic of ARTstor's strategy and interactions with the visual resources community.

Both technical and community relations responses are required to achieve greater success. I'm on the outskirts of this particular community, so I tend to focus on the technical side. But I think all the parties involved need better, more productive ways to build a constructive relationship for the future.