RE: The museum and heritage sectors

[Donald Heath <heath@linus.isoc.org>]

Cary Karp

Speaking as an individual member of the IAHC, not for the group, let
me first say thank you for your very thoughtful and considered posting.

I think you have presented something of merit that deserves further
consideration, not only for iTLDs, but for the idea of forming a registry
with the iTLDs you cited.

At this point, I should probably state some disclaimer to the effect that
final resolutions could make my observation moot, but I'll just leave it
at that ;-)

Don

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From: 	Cary Karp[SMTP:ck@nrm.se]
Sent: 	Tuesday, November 26, 1996 4:25 PM
To: 	iahc-discuss
Cc: 	Patrick Boylan; Elisabeth des Portes
Subject: 	The museum and heritage sectors

Although reference has been made on iahc-discuss to the IAHC
having been inundated by representatives of various sectors
wishing to influence the course of its activities, little of
this talk has been conducted openly on the list. I am therefore
uncertain about the appropriateness of the following remarks but
will wade into the discussion, anyway.

I am responsible for several second level domains maintained
within the museum community. The most significant of these is
probably icom.org, operated by the International Council of
Museums. ICOM is a non-governmental organization (NGO)
associated with UNESCO and is unique within the museum community
in the nature and scope of its mandate. Museums, in turn, enjoy
the dubious status in the iTLD context of being explicitly
excluded from registration in the three-letter domains. (Quoting
from the InterNIC registration form, "museums register under
country domains.")

In the situation where no iTLD would, in any case, provide an
intuitive association with the museum sector there has been
little reason for us to do anything other than register our
individual institutions as best we might. Some have taken
advantage of InterNIC's casual attitude to the enforcement of
its own rules and registered in .com or .org. Others have been
able to establish second level domains in the countries in which
they are located. The less fortunate have ended up on third or
fourth levels where more contorted naming schemes are applied
(most often, institution.sector.country, where the sector
options reflect the current three-letter iTLDs).

The Postel memo raised the hope of all this changing. If the
museum sector were to end up among those that had its own
iTLD, notions of guessable and memorable domain designations
might be realized. Since commercial actors in the network world
continuallly express keen interest in exploiting museums' rich
content resources, the thought of our being the focus of
commercial interest in the iTLD regard is not far-fetched. We
are, however, equally concerned that we might not be regarded as
having enough remunerative value for commercially oriented domain
operators to go to any great lengths to cater to our needs. We
would certainly perceive no benefit to being tucked into some
general purpose domain such as the draft-iahc-higgs .ARTS
("Education; providing of training;sporting and cultural activities.")

As a result, ICOM has discussed the advisability of clearly
articulating the museum community's interests within the IAHC
context. If there is to be a new domain with which we feel
ourselves to be clearly identifiable we would like, at the very
least, to exert some influence over the agency charged with its
operation. Better still, might be for us to put in a bid for the
delegation of authority to operate our own domain. Since, on the
assumption that the relevant aspects of the Postel proposal will
be retained, new authorities will be expected to operate several
domains, we have initiated discussions with other NGO's within
the heritage sector about our joint operation of several
domains. These might include the International Council on
Archives (ICA), the International Council on Monuments and Sites
(ICOMOS), and the International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions (IFLA).

Tentative suggestions for designations for the individual
domains are:

     .MUSEA for museums
     .LIBER for libraries
     .ARKIV for archives
     .SITES for monuments and sites

Several of the NGO's already operate their own name servers, a
joint WHOIS database could easily be hosted, our centers of
operation are outside the USA, and we've been around for
decades. (ICOM turned fifty last week.)

All this info has been provided to enable the answers to the
following two questions:

Would any of the IAHC members be willing to provide some
informal appraisal of the possibility of such a constellation
being viable?

If it is, would it be advisable for us to write a proposal
stating the heritage community's interests in this process prior
to the Dec 1st deadline?

These questions are in no way intended to preemt any mechanism
for formal application that the IAHC might establish. We'd just
like to have some ballpark notion of the purposefulness of our
pursuing the matter.


Cary Karp               Department of Information Technology
mailto:ck@nrm.se        Swedish Museum of Natural History
http://ck.nrm.se/       Svante Arrheniusv. 3
Phone: +46 8 666 4055   Box 50007
Fax:   +46 8 666 4235   104 05 Stockholm, Sweden