Executive Summary:

The rapid growth of multimedia computing and the Internet, and the entrance of the commercial sector into information and the education sector previously dominated by academic interests, have raised the stakes for arts and humanities computing. In addition, ongoing reductions in funding for arts, humanities and educational research (especially from the federal government) have made it imperative that dollars be well spent. In the spring of 1995, the Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP) asked several dozen experts to help it identify the areas of research that they considered critical to future progress in arts and humanities computing and to nominate specialists who could knowledgeably reflect on these domains. Eight individuals were commissioned to write papers on these research issues, and two electronic discussions, open to the Internet community, were conducted to stimulate reaction to their views. This report uses the commissioned papers and discussions as a basis for identifying issues that any research agenda in arts and humanities computing should address.

The papers and discussions exposed four major infrastructural issues and three significant intellectual problems:

• The arts and humanities lack a venue, such as an Annual Review of Arts and Humanities Computing, a conference, or an electronic list, through which progress on the research agenda can be reported and assessed. Support for such research forums is essential.
  
  
• The arts and humanities have not given rise to a field of reflective study, analogous to the history, philosophy and sociology of science, with a consequent lack of agreement among its practitioners on the fundamental characteristics of the fields and the conditions for successful systems development and evolution. The study of the arts and humanities as fields of human endeavor is necessary to identify the critical success criteria for software and systems.
  
  
• In the vast array of standards-setting and de facto standardization processes under way in the computing industry, the arts and humanities need supported spokespersons to articulate their constituents' requirements. Without such spokespersons, they will have no voice in the development of software, communication and display technologies, and standards governing the range from applications to systems.
  
  
• The arts and humanities need to expose their practitioners, whether academic scholars, museum professionals, or librarians, to the difference that computer-assisted scholarship and teaching could make. Promoting institutional and social changes that are essential to create a hospitable environment for computer-supported arts and humanities is thus a tactical requirement.

The intellectual issues needing research are considerably more complex:

• Representation:
  The crucial advantage of digital libraries lie in the flexibility of knowledge representations to support different intellectual perspectives and functionality. However, if they are to create a unified and comprehensive library of useful knowledge, the arts and humanities must make significant progress in the next decade in shared methods of representation.
  
  
• Retrieval:
  If comprehensive libraries of useful knowledge are created, their use will depend on improved means of access. Discovering appropriate resources in the net-worked environment and retrieving relevant information in a usable format will be critical. Although the last generation of research in these areas has been far from conclusive, it is clear that distributed networks place new demands on discovery and retrieval.
  
  
• Resource persistence:
  Even if resources of great utility can be created and found, scholarship will depend on assurance that scholars can cite them at a fixed address, that they will look and behave consistently, and that they will persist over time.

CONTENTS
Overview and discussion points by David Bearman.
Synopsis of research opportunities and funding needs.
Tools for creating and exploiting content by Robert Kolker and Ben Schneiderman.
Knowledge representation by Susan Hockey.
Resource search and discovery by Gary Marchionini.
Conversion of traditional source materials into digital form by Anne R. Kenney.
Image and multimedia retrieval by Donna M. Romer.
Learning and teaching by Janet H. Murray.
Archiving and authenticity by David Bearman.
New social and economic mechanisms to encourage access by John Garrett.
Topical index.
Glossary.