Beyond WWW and HTML - Standards for Cultural Heritage Information: The RAMA Perspective

RAMA (Remote Access to Museum Archives) software permits simultaneous access to documentary multimedia databases of European museums. The challenge awaiting specialists in museums, universities, and cultural institutions when the cost of telecommunication go down, for the general public to access cultural heritage information, will lie in the use of common standards by the museum community. RAMA joined CIMI to share a common vision through the use of standards, and sharing the results with similar initiatives. Now RAMA is finding a way to extend this work within Europe in their mission to set up the Global Information Society among the members of the European Union. Introduction This paper is based upon work carried out within the scope of the European project RAMA (Remote Access to Museum Archives) and within the CIMI project CHI0 (Cultural Heritage Information Online). We would like to thank the RAMA and CIMI partners for their share in this work. am c o l l a b & ~ e s ~ ~ ~ 1 0 with CIMI The RAMA project was asked to participate in CIMI as early as 1993, as the experiment was seen as a positive way to actually detect problems arising from the lack of common standards practice in the O Archives & Museum Informatics, 1995 28 1