CIMI Consortium—A Valued Association

This activity is now closed. The information on this page is provided for historical purposes only.

Originally the Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information, CIMI was formed to support the development and dissemination of community standards for preserving museum information in digital form. CIMI and its supporters created important intellectual assets, from publications to the content of the CIMI Web site. Much of its work has been taken up by museum system vendors and other organizations.

In the 1990s CIMI guided museums on information interchange, published the CIMI Standards Framework, endorsed SGML for structuring information and Z39.50 for search and retrieval, and developed a standard for finding aids. CIMI's Project CHIO (Cultural Heritage Information Online) provided a way to test SGML and Z39.50 as standards. A further case study tested CIMI's standards-based information strategies in the "real world" of eight museums.

Projects from 2000 through 2003 explored the nature of museum information and ways to involve information resources in museum visitors' experiences; contributed to the development of the SPECTRUM Document Type Description; and investigated ways to incorporate handheld, wireless, mobile "computing" into museum visitors' experience in the Handscape project (Handheld Access to the Museum Landscape).

CIMI's founder and executive director was John Perkins. RLG's president James Michalko chaired CIMI's executive committee and RLG provided business support for CIMI's operations. These operations ceased at the end of 2003 while RLG continued to oversee the three-year Handscape project until June 2004.

You will find much more about CIMI's work in archived pages from the original CIMI Web site. These are available in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cimi.org.