AIC-CC User Guidelines

From Wiki

Background

In Fall 2008 AIC staff applied for an NCPTT grant to place AIC specialty group (SG) catalogues in a wiki platform. It was thought that this collaborative, online format would streamline the process of compiling the catalogues and offer conservators easier access to these resources. There are currently four specialty groups that have catalogues: Book and Paper (in this case, there are both book and paper catalogues), Paintings, Photographic Materials, and Textiles. The initial goal for this project is integrate the collaborative knowledge base with the AIC site, and input the existing catalogues into it. The catalogues existing in 2008 of which there is only a paper version will be transferred to electronic format by scanning with optical character recognition (OCR). They will then be revised prior to posting online by the SG representative, to edit errors that may have been generated by the OCR process. Future catalogs and chapters will be created directly onto the wiki platform.

Software

The recommendation from the IT Company designing the AIC website was to use MediaWiki software. This software does not use a WYSIWYG text editor, but has shotcuts to basic formatting functions. The choice for using Wikimedia software was that it is the system with a larger community, it has well established examples, notably MediaWiki, and it guarantees upgrade in the long run.
Users must be familiar with using HTML language when posting information to the website (see 3.4.).

Editing Catalogue Entries

Paper based conservation catalogues have a lead editor or compiler, who collects the individual contributions. The number of contributors varies. These contributions are reviewed by an editorial board before finally being accepted into the catalogue chapter.
Similarly, online catalogue entries must be prepared before being made accessible to the wider audience. After this, chapters may be modified or added to by users with editing permissions. If at some point the editorial board deems a chapter to be complete, the entry may be locked and no additional changes will be made, until a user with administrator permission opens the entry.
Chapters on information with need of constant update, as for example of a catalog of the Electronic Materials Group (EMG) may need to be frequently added to and may not be closed for additions at any point.

Linking pages and concepts within the chapters

One of the advantages of using a online collaborative knowledge base is the possibility of linking key words to another page in the website with a definition (products or procedures, for example). External links to other websites may be added in the references area, at the end of a page.

Commenting and editing

In each individual page, the 'Discussion' tab allows for commenting, so users with editing permissions may make suggestions or initiate other discussions.
The 'History' tab allows keeping track of which and when changes were made to the article and by whom.

Searchability

Searches will display results from the AIC wiki, but not from other AIC general website pages.

Text editing within Wikimedia software

Editing wiki entries with Wikimedia software utilizes HTML, but knowledge of HTML code is not necessary. There are shortcuts to allow basic WYSIWYG editing which are easy to use.

Community of Users

Contributors to the AIC wiki - who can add, delete, or edit information - must be AIC members or trained conservators, chosen by their SG as editing members of the entries.
The intended users of the AIC wiki are the wider Conservation community and related areas.

Levels of Access and Updates

Levels of Access

The website will be made available with varying degrees of user permissions. All access will be password protected.
As of yet, the proposal is to establish three levels of user access, defined by the Project Team and SG Representatives. The reason for this is to be able to control who is making changes, but anyone who wishes to contribute at a higher level of access may ask to do so. There is no limit of the number of users who can be defined to have the various levels of access (that is to say, there is no one set number of users with the first level of access, for example).
The first level, with the most rights is that of the Project Team, SG Representatives and Chapter Supervisor(s). These are allowed to edit information as well as create user accounts, block users, lock entries to any further change.
The second level is that of contributors to chapters who can edit information in any page of the website. These will be all AIC members who request a personal password protected user account.
The third level is that of users who can only read the information but are not allowed to make changes. These will be anyone who contact AIC and requests to receive the general; login and password.

Cross Specialty Contributions

All users with access to editing information may contribute. There will be no separate levels of access by specialty.
This feature will most likely lead to fruitful contributions and exchange across specialties.

Updates to the website

The person(s) in charge of each chapter is responsible for certifying updates.
AIC members should regularly access the site for updates. The website has a feature that will automatically send a notification when specific pages were updated, should users wish to activate it. AIC may regularly update membership lists on the developments of the chapters.

Disclaimers

All pages regarding treatment or hands-on procedure have a disclaimer to advert against the use of the described procedures by non-conservators.
The disclaimer reads: “ This article describes conservation procedures. It is meant to be used as exchange of technical information among trained art conservators and should not be used by non-conservators to intervene in cultural property."

Copyright and Licensing

With the exception of articles published by JAIC which require copyright transfer, all material published by AIC is governed by a licence agreement. Under the terms of the licence, authors retain copyright of their work and are free to publish the work elsewhere. AIC, however, retains the right to re-publish the work in various media and formats. Prior to 2006 / 2007 most work published by AIC was not covered by any publication agreement, making re-publication, on the web or otherwise, problematic. Through a series of membership emails, AIC reached out to authors to make them aware of the new licence agreement and publication policy. Authors wishing to opt out of the AIC license agreement were permitted to do so. No authors decided to opt out. As a result of this effort all catalog chapters are covered by the AIC licence agreement permitting re-publication on the AIC website. Nevertheless, should a past contributor wish to have their content removed, AIC will comply, and the missing content will need to re-written. All past contributors will be acknowledged on the site, though names may be removed if an author makes a request. Existing chapters where it may not be possible to have their original authors posting it (thus leaving a record of their name associated to the chapter), these will be posted online by the wiki team. Authorship will be assessed by writing down the names of the authors. Subsequent additions will be noted in the 'History' log of the page. All content posted on the website will be covered by the terms of the license agreement: authors own material but grant AIC the right to publish it in the future. All posts keep a record of their author. Users of the website agree that their contributions may be viewed and used in the terms established under point 5 – Levels of Access.

Images

Images inserted on previous catalogs will be scanned and posted on the website. Images posted onto the website should be owned by the user. Size should be maintained at a reasonable level (2MB or less), that allows to view a clear image on the screen, but that will not take a long time to load.

Development

Editors can expand on chapters on a restricted area of the site, and later post the information to the public site. This allows define an initial draft which is later open to contributions. Editors can also post previously published chapters, opening them up for revision. Still to be determined if there will there be a cost to SGs not covered by wiki grant for upkeep and/or expansion of wiki site going into the future.

Information Backup

To be determined with the IT developing company.