Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online (CAMEO)

In 2006, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) formed a
collaborative agreement with EU-Artech Access, Research and
Technology for the conservation of European Cultural Heritage at
<URL:http://www.eu-artech.org> to increase the international scope
of CAMEO (Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online at
cameo.mfa.org).  In 2010, this partnership was redeveloped and
extended with the CHARISMA (Cultural Heritage Advanced Research
Infrastructures) <URL:http://www.charismaproject.eu> European
research project consortium that is focused to providing
transnational access, doing cooperative research, and networking
applications in the field of cultural heritage conservation.

As part of the collaboration, members have contributed synonyms,
images, and information to CAMEO as well as provided systematic
review of the material records.  To date, over 9000 European
language synonyms have been added to the database as an aid for
searching records.  Now users can enter either English or
non-English terms into the MATERIAL search box.  Both the primary
name and the synonym list are searched simultaneously to locate a
material record.  This collaboration has helped expand the reach of
the website into a broadly-used international resource.  Examination
of the website statistics shows that CAMEO has logged over 250,000
page views by users in 166 countries over the past 12 months.

The MFA is dedicated to maintaining CAMEO as a free website
accessible to all users.  Additionally, in its commitment to keeping
the technology behind the database current, the MFA anticipates
transformation of CAMEO to a wiki-platform in the next year.  This
update will provide the flexibility to keep editorial restrictions
while also allowing easier, wide-spread contributions for revising
and expanding the scope and content of our multi-functional
information source.  CAMEO welcomes comments and additions by all
users via the SUBMIT material information page of its website.

Michele Derrick
The Schorr Family Associate Research Scientist
Editor: CAMEO at cameo.mfa.org
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115
617-369-3182


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:19
                Distributed: Wednesday, October 6, 2010
                       Message Id: cdl-24-19-003
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