Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention on the new website www.minim.ac.uk which provides the public interface for the project MINIM-UK.
MINIM (short for Musical INstrument Interface for Museums and collections) is a two year project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and coordinated by the Royal College of Music in partnership with the Royal Academy of Music, Horniman Museum and Gardens and Edinburgh University. Its aims are:
* To create digital records of at least 20,000 musical instruments from over 100 collections in the UK.
* To harvest records on musical instruments already available through separate British catalogues online, and provide a single access point to instruments in British collections.
* To produce new audio and video recordings of historically relevant instruments held in British collections.
* To convey records into MIMO (www.mimo-international.com) and Europeana, in order to greatly increase availability of records from UK collections and allow small and large collections to participate in the projects overcoming technological issues.
* To collaborate with Google Cultural Institute to provide dynamic records, through the Google search engine and Google Now, to increase visitor's awareness of these collections and their attendance.
The first phase of the project is now delivered and available through the website: it consisted in the development of cataloguing standards agreed by members of the Steering Group, and the revision of the list of collections (now increased to over 300).
A database officer is currently working on harvesting existing records, and providing an interface for two cataloguers who will be hired by the end of summer and travel for the next year to catalogue collections.
We would be delighted to receive your comments and suggestions
All best wishes
Gabriele Rossi Rognoni and Richard Martin
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Gabriele Rossi Rognoni
Curator, Royal College of Music Museum
Royal College of Music
Prince Consort Road
London SW7 2BS
UK
T +44 (0)20 7591 4843
www.rcm.ac.uk/museum
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