• The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
• The Russian Committee of the International Council on Museums (ICOM)
• The Committee for Culture and Art of the Ivanovo Region Administration
• The Association for Documentation and New Information Technologies (ADIT)
• The Ivanovo Burylin State Museum Association
• The Ivanovo State University of Power Engineering

About ADIT

    The Russian Association on Documentation and Information Technologies (ADIT) was founded in April 1996 by the incentive of the Russian Committee of the International Council on Museums (ICOM, Russia) and three major Moscow museums: The State Museum-Preserve "The Moscow Kremlin", The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Art and the State Tretiakov Gallery. The Association has been recognized as a professional section of the Russian ICOM. Its activities are specified by a Regulation of the Russian ICOM.

    The main aim of the association is a joint effort of Russian museums in creating databases about the Russian cultural heritage. The latter will be used as a basis for launching educational and popular projects and building up local, regional and nationwide museum information networks. Achieving this aim will mean giving wide access to information on the cultural heritage to users (museum researchers, students and the wide public), both in Russia and abroad.

    The Association has 120 individual and 40 group members (as of November 1997). The Association is governed by its Organizing Bureau, comprised of its President Alexander Dremailov, Head of Information Systems' Division at the State Museum-Preserve "Moscow Kremlin" (tel/fax (095)202-1624), its Vice President and group leaders of the following groups: Legislation, Documentation and Standards, International Relations, Databases, Image Processing, Multimedia and Education Programs, Information Networks, Telecommunication and Internet, Publications. The Association is based in Moscow. There is an affiliate in St.Petersburg.
    You can find the Regulations of ADIT, the staff of the Organizing Committee, a membership form and fresh news in WWW.ADIT.MUSEUM.RU.

     ADIT activities comprise annual conferences, workshops and seminars. The Organizing Committee gathers twice yearly to coordinate activities.

The First Conference ADIT'97

    The First Conference ADIT'97 was held in May 1997 in St.Petersburg.

     Organizers and Sponsors of ADIT'97
    The conference has been organized by the Russian Committee of ICOM, the Russian Association on Documentation and Information Technologies (ADIT), the Union of Museum Researchers of St.Petersburg, with the help of the State Hermitage, The Central Scientific Research Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, with technical support of the State Hermitage, AMPRO Company (St.Petersburg), ALT-SOFT Company (St.Petersburg), and "Bisprom" (Moscow), with the financial support of Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation, St.Petersburg division) and the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research.

    Summing up ADIT'97
    The motto of ADIT'97 was "Application of Information Technologies in Museums and Practical Results of Experimental Research". ADIT'97 participants made over 30 oral reports and took part in group sessions.
    Plenary sessions dealt with the most imminent matters: launching an information project "Russian Museums in Internet", databases, local information networks, educational and popularizing programs on CD ROM, legal protection of intellectual property. An exhibition of museum information programs was held in the framework of the conference.
     On May 23, 1997, a Round Table on "Museums in Today's World: Problems of Digitization" and "Creating a New Type of Museum Specialist" was held in the State Hermitage.
     For the first time in the history of Russian museum life, there was a contest of museum programs in three nominations: Databases, Multimedia Education Programs, Telecommunication Networks and Internet. Programs were exhibited for several days, 27 projects won awards.

ADIT'98

    The Second Annual ADIT'98 Conference will take place in Ivanovo between 18 and 22 May. Around 120 participants from over 40 Russian museums have been invited. We have also invited members of the UNESCO Information and Informatics Division (France) and the International Committee on Museum Documents (CIDOC).

     The motto of ADIT'98 is "Museums and the Information Space: the Problem of Digitalization and the Cultural Heritage". One of the main issues is what strategy and tactics Russian museums must use to join the open information society.
    The national cultural heritage in Russia's museums and art galleries is an important and integral part of the world's cultural heritage. Unfortunately, most of it is inaccessible to the public. Museums exhibit only around one percent of their funds. Far from every Russian citizen has the opportunity to visit museums in Russia even, to say nothing of other countries. Giving people access to the world's cultural heritage means a lot to Russia.
    The main direction in which we suggest to solve this problem is creating and developing modern communications and technologies that offer interactive access to the cultural heritage. Many world's museums, including some Russian ones, have gone a long way in this direction. New computer databases contain descriptions and images of museum articles. Information networks on the cultural heritage already function in the USA, Canada and some European countries. Their information is put to good use by science and education. "Educational entertainment" gets more and more popular thanks to multimedia technologies.
    However, information about the cultural heritage penetrates the open information space at a very slow rate, and not just due to poor technical or financial circumstances. One of the main reasons is that society, including the decision-makers in these matters, does not realize the importance of uniting people from different countries by the idea of preserving the World's Cultural Heritage and giving people access to it.
    There are efforts worldwide to speed up this process. Numerous international initiatives and projects in this sphere include the UNESCO Info-Ethics Congress in 1997, Monte-Carlo, the "Memorandum of Mutual Understanding" in the framework of DG-XII-B project of the European Commission, certain ICOM projects. Many enthusiastic people (lawyers, art critics, news people) try to make their contribution to this high concern.
     ADIT'98 sees discussing these matters at a representative forum as one of its main goals.

    Plenary sessions will be devoted to strategic aims of museum computerizing, possible applications of modern computer technologies in museums. One of the central issues are museums in Internet. Another important professional discussion is one on legal protection of copyright on digital information.

    The Museum Computer Festival is a way of computer presentation of museum activities, that is going to be used for the first time in the Exhibition Center of the Burylin Museum Association on the International Museum Day, May 18, 1998. During this event specialists from Russia's major museums will tell the public about the activities of museums in Russia and abroad, using the most up-to-date information technologies: CD-ROM, Internet etc. This event will be the first in a completely new project bearing the same name.
    'Museum Computer Festival' is a non-commercial, strictly educational project that aims to give the wide public access to the world's cultural heritage via Internet. The project is based on the principle 'education through entertainment'. It suggests the creation and demonstration of virtual educational software based on museum collections, in the form of lectures, excursions, teleconferences, museum computer cafe's etc. with elements of entertainment shows. A special feature of the project is that users worldwide, in the USA or Europe, in major cities or villages, will have access to the same data. All users and participants of the Museum Computer Festival get the same emotions and learning.

     See ADIT'98 Agenda for details