ICOM maintains a corporate presence on the Internet. Its reasons for doing so and the scope of the network services which it provides are similar to those of countless other organizations with which it shares this powerful communications medium. ICOM is, however, alone among them in its role within the museum community and its emergence on the global networks is a significant occurrence.
This text is intended to provide a review ICOM's status on the Internet, including a brief history of how it has been attained. At the same time, some of the processes which have motivated ICOM to undertake its networking activities will be considered. With all this in mind, it may be easier to sketch future directions in which ICOM can move as networking becomes all the more an integral part of its activities.
The genesis of ICOM's network presence has been influenced to a great extent by the previous networking experiences of its organizational and individual members. A distillate of this experience served as the basis for a strategy which is continuously being refined as a growing number of members actively express the scope of their interest in this process. This, in turn, is increasingly likely to involve a member speaking from the position of being a newly established provider of network services rather than solely as a consumer of the services of others.
An initial tenet of ICOM's network strategy was ensuring that the largest possible segment of its membership could have access to the new services. Since virtually every network user has access to electronic mail, it was decided that material made available by ICOM via the Internet should be accessible through e-mail whenever possible. In addition to repositories of documents which were constructed on this basis, e-mail distribution lists were establsihed to permit network communication both within ICOM's committees and working groups, and in these bodies' contacts with the world around them.
Users of ICOM's document repositories were subsequently provided with the ability to use the full complement of Internet tools for the location and retrieval of all available material. For the sake of historical accuracy, however, it should be noted that prototype systems using such tools were in operation prior to the public announcement of the e-mail based services.
As the World Wide Web assumed its position as a dominant service on the Internet, it also become the most frequently used channel for accessing ICOM's material. When it was clear that a substantial portion of the network users within ICOM had access to the Web, the need to be able to deliver all material by e-mail was no longer of critical importance. ICOM bodies which are currently planning to establish individual network presences almost invariably restrict their consideration to e-mail distribution lists for conducting their internal business, and the use of the World Wide Web for providing material to a broader audience.
Committees and working groups are actively encouraged to establish their own Web sites at locations convenient to the people responsible for their maintenance. Material prepared by the Secretariat, Officers, and governing bodies is stored on a central site which also provides links to the separate committee facilities. Plans for the development of this resource include providing stylistic guidelines for material presented in ICOM's name, and the establishment of copies of the contents of the central site at various locations worldwide. These sanctioned mirror sites are intended both to ensure convenient access to the ICOM network resource from any location, and to emphasize the global aspect of the underlying effort.
The activities described above were initially conducted as an experiment in the applicability of networking technology to ICOM's work. This informal introductory phase was superseded by the first publicly advertised services. ICOM now maintains both an autonomous network host computer and its own Internet domain. A long term strategic basis for the extension of these services will be formulated during the course of 1996. To this end, an ad hoc working group within the Advisory Committee is in the process of initiating its activities.
There are many possible directions which ICOM's networking activities may take. However, two aspects of this process require particular attention. The first is a straightforward economic matter. The cost benefits derived by the use of electronic publication within, for example, the academic community may motivate ICOM to adapt similar techniques in the preparation and dissemination of documents which are currently available only in a conventionally printed and postally distributed format.
The second issue is both considerably more complex and of great urgency. The media industries are currently in the process of acquiring rights to the the commercial distribution of electronic multimedia derived from museum holdings. Although it is entirely possible for a museum to benefit from an arrangement of this type, many museums are allowing themselves to be exploited in the belief that they are not in the media or network "business". One of ICOM's traditional roles has been to protect museums from exploitation and the network age extension of such activities will require careful consideration.
These concerns are all a part of a technological revolution that is certain to have consequences which few of us are capable of foreseeing. The immediate future therefore presents ICOM with an unprecedended challenge. We must not only become proficient in the use of the strange and powerful new tools which have been placed at our disposal, but we must also develop the ability to perceive which of them can enhance the fundamental value of our activities. More significantly, we must attempt to steer this development in directions which we feel are truly beneficial to the communities which we serve.
The role of being a technological visionary, even if not entirely a new one for ICOM, is clearly assuming profoundly new dimensions. Few members of the museum profession can claim to have more than a rudimentary grasp of the complex technical forces which are so rapidly changing our world. We may freely admit to this process taking us by surprise. We may also admit to there being little in our backgrounds which can help us when confronting all these new issues. What we cannot do is shirk responsibility for guiding our museums safely through this uncharted territory. If we do not squarely confront that task, we run the risk of loosing control over our institutions as the so-called information society takes its shape.