The AMICO Library™ Users Session
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
La Jolla, California
May 8, 2003

Each year at our annual Members Meeting, AMICO devotes an afternoon to Users and Uses of The AMICO LIbrary.

Teaching with AMICO Library Digital Images
Dr. Andrew E. Hershberger, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio

As an art history professor in Ohio, I have access to The AMICO Library through the OhioLINK Digital Media Center. My presentation demonstrates how and why I have incorporated The AMICO Library's digital images into my PowerPoint lectures. Using a specific course as an example, I analyze the fundamental differences between teaching a history of photography course with slides as opposed to teaching it digitally with The AMICO Library. The quality, quantity, and flexibility of AMICO Library images are discussed, as well as their pedagogical value.

PDF version of Presentation Slides

The Visual Image User Study (VIUS) at The Pennsylvania State University
Ann Copeland, Special Collections Cataloging Librarian, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

Penn State's Visual Image User Study (VIUS) is involved in a rigorous needs assessment for a digital image delivery system at a large and complex university. Current and expected picture use in arts, humanities, and environmental studies (more that 70 academic departments) is being studied. A broad variety of measures have been employed.

Findings to date relate to the following:

• The large number of people in a variety of disciplines using pictures in their work (75% of responding faculty and 55% or responding students)
• Content as their chief concern
• The widespread maintenance of picture collections by individuals (44% of the faculty and 44 % of students who use pictures)
• The desire to use personal collections with those supplied by a delivery system
• Searching preferences associated with researchers and independent learners as opposed to those associated with teachers

This overview of the study, now in the final weeks of a 26-month project, discusses highlights of findings to date.

PDF version of Presentation Slides

The VIUS Study Web Site and Interim Report

AMICO On-line User Survey - Preliminary Results
Jennifer Trant and David Bearman, Art Museum Image Consortium

AMICO has an on-line user survey underway; this is a report on preliminary findings drawn from early responses.

The questions in the survey were specifically structured to gather longitudinal data; they are based on questions asked during the Museum Educational Site Licensing (MESL) project in 1997 and during the AMICO University Testbed project in 1999. Asking them again in 2003, we can learn about how our user populations needs and perspectives have changed.

Highlights of the survey results included:

• A very large percentage of satisfied users

• over 72% rated the appeal of The AMICO Library either High or Very High
• over 87% rated the quality of the images in The AMICO LIbrary either High or Very High
• over 64% of the users of the Thumbnail Catalog rated it High or Very High

• The emergence of a class of intermediaries (librarians, and visual resource curators) whose responsibility it is to train users

PDF version of Presentation Slides