CURRICULUM VITAE

Jennifer Trant

www.archimuse.com

Archives & Museum Informatics, Toronto, Ontario
Partner and Principal Consultant (1997 on)

Consultant in the strategic management of cultural heritage information and institutions. Areas of expertise include policy and planning, organizational design, online community development and mangement, social media, networked access to cultural heritage information (in text, image and multimedia), international standards development, project design and management, meeting facilitation and reporting. See Client List.

Principal Investigator, steve.museum (Fall 2006 - Fall 2008)

Directed the research efforts of steve.museum, a two-year, 8-museum collaboration investigating the role of tagging and folksonomy in improving access to on-line collections. Authored successful grant proposal for which The Metropolitan Museum of Art (and later the Indianapolis Museum of Art) was awarded $503,550 (Project Budget: $1,011,987: $503,550 IMLS; $508,437 other) from the US Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Narrative used on IMLS Web site.

Executive Director, Art Museum Image Consortium (1998-2004)

Established and directed a membership-based, not-for-profit consortium, licensing museum multimedia documentation for educational use in universities, K-12 education and public libraries. Built self-supporting organization with > $1 million budget from start-up. Full organizational details available at http://www.amico.org.

Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Library and Information Science, University of Toronto (2002, 2003)

Co-taught a graduate level seminar course: Special Topics in Information Studies Digital Heritage: Creation, Publication, Metadata Management, and Service Delivery in the Digital Library. Syllabus was on-line at http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/courses/LIS/2199/ [removed when faculty re-organized site]. Available from the Internet Archive.

Editor in Chief, Archives and Museums Informatics: the cultural heritage informatics quarterly (1997-2000) Managing Editor (1996-1997)

Edited a peer-reviewed journal from Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands

Arts and Humanities Data Service, King's College, London
Collections and Standards Development (1996)

Responsible for the development a common standards framework for the five distributed digital archives of this National Service, funded by the Joint Information Systems Commission, including the definition of shared metadata for discovery and retrieval, the coordination of collections development policy, and the exploration of digital preservation alternatives. Advised UK national committees on the development of networked digital content for higher education.

Director, Arts Information Management, Toronto, Canada (1990-1996)

Consultant to art galleries, museums, and educational institutions regarding the management of information about works of art. Services included strategic planning, project design and implementation, database design and implementation, and data and system documentation. Clients included the College Art Association, J. Paul Getty Trust, Luna Imaging, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Assignments including facilitation of the Art Information Task Force, and drafting of the Categories for the Description of Works of Art.

Canadian Centre for Architecture
Coordinator, Catalogue Development Program (1989-1993)

Managed the planning, development, documentation and implementation of the computerized catalogue for the Prints & Drawings, Photographs and Archives Collections, including reconciliation with the MARC-based practices of the Library and with international museum standards. Developed shared cataloguing and authority control standards recorded in the CCA Collections Documentation Guide. Developed policy regarding access to information. Planned a retrospective cataloguing strategy and programs. Trained curatorial staff, supervised cataloguers, editors, systems consultants.

Canadian Centre for Architecture
Curatorial Assistant, Prints & Drawings Collection (1988-1989)

Represented the CCA at the Foundation for Documents of Architecture, Washington, DC an international project to develop standards and systems for cataloging architectural drawings that resulted in the publication of Guidelines for the Description of Architectural Drawings and Records. Began cataloging standards for Prints & Drawings Collections, and eliminated accessioning backlog..

National Gallery of Canada, Prints, Drawings & Photographs
Curatorial Assistant (1986-1988)

Cataloged large sections of the collection for the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) database; coordinated the fall 1998 exhibition and catalog Master Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (and tour). Assisted with the installation of works from the permanent collection in the galleries. Researched and catalogued works of art considered for acquisition and prepared written justifications.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Conference Chair / Program Committee

• Co-Chair, Museums and the Web, 1997-2009
• Co-Chair: International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting, ichim 1997-2001, 2007. Program Committee: 2003-2005
• Program Committee: WWW Tagging Workshop, 2007, 2008
• Program Committee: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries – JCDL (ACM / IEEE), 2002
• Culture Program Committee: Tenth International World Wide Web Conference, 2001
• Program Committee: Digital Libraries - DL (ACM - ACM SIGIR and SIGWEB) 1999, 2000
• Program Committee: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), 2002, (ACM/IEEE)
• Program Committee: Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH)

Boards: Past Chair

• Multimedia Working Group, Documentation Committee, International Council of Museums (ICOM/CIDOC) 1994-1997
• Fine Arts Working Group, Canadian Heritage Information Network (1991-1993)

Boards

• Media and Technology Committee, American Association of Museums (AAM) 1997-98, 2000
• International Visual Arts Information Network (IVAIN)
• Documentation Committee, International Council of Museums (ICOM/CIDOC)
• Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL) Management Committee (1995-1998)

Peer Review

• Regular peer review of papers and proposals for granting agencies, conferences and journals, including USA: National Science Foundation (NSF), United Kingdom: Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), The Netherlands: Research Board

Community Standards Development Projects

• Art Information Task Force (AITF) / Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA)
• Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI)
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
• International Committee of Museums (ICOM) / Documentation Committee (CIDOC) Data Model Working Group
• National Initiative for Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH): & Best Practices Working Group
  NISO Image Metadata Project (2002)
• Visual Images Working Group, Conference on Fair Use (CONFU), US Department of Commerce (1996-1998)

Proposal Review

• Regularly review manuscripts for scholarly journals and funding proposals for agencies North America and Europe.

Society Memberships

• American Association of Museums (AAM)
• Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA)
• Canadian Association of Museums (CMA)
• College Art Association (CAA)
• Computers and the History of Art (CHArt)
• International Committee of Museums (ICOM) / Documentation Working Group (CIDOC)
• Museum Computer Network (MCN)
• Visual Resources Association (VRA)

Web Sites

Archives & Museums Informatics http://www.archimuse.com (1997- present)

• Information architecture, design, execution and editing, including the Museums and the Web and ICHIM conference sites and paper archive
• Host conference.archimuse.com on-line community, a 2,000+ member site including a subject bibliography of over 1,400 citations in cultural heritage informatics.

 Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) http://www.amico.org (1998-2006; archived)

• Information architecture, and editing, including the Thumbnail Catalog of The AMICO Library (approximately 130,000 works of art)
• Graphic design contracted from Razorfish Inc., New York.

Digital Heritage: Creation, Publication, Metadata Management, and Service Delivery in the Digital Library (2002-2003; archived)

• Created Course Web site. Co-taught with David Bearman.
   http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/courses/LIS/2199/ [site removed when Faculty web site redeisgned].

Big Rideau Lake Association http://www.brla.on.ca (2003-2010)

• Information architecture, design, execution and volunteer maintenance of community information resource

EDUCATION

University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies
PhD Candidate, 2004-2011 (declined to submit dissertation; see Publications for research results)

Conducted pioneering research into folksonomy in the art museum, and the contribution of social tagging to improved access to art collections on-line. University of Toronto Fellowship (2004-2007); FIS Faculty Council (2004-06) and FIS Executive Committee (2005-06); Vice President, Doctoral Students Association, 2005-06.

Queen's University, Kingston
M.A. in Art History, 1987
Thesis: The Victorian Furniture Industry in Grey and Bruce Counties, Ontario

Queen's University Graduate Scholarship, 1986
Teaching Assistant, 1985-1986
Faculty Council Member, 1985-1986

University of Toronto, Trinity College
B.A. (Hons.) with distinction, 1984
Double Major in Canadian History and Religious Studies, Minor in Anthropology

 

PUBLICATIONS LIST