October 25, 2002 -  Thank you for signing up to receive Maryland ArtMail on the Maryland ArtSource Web site at www.marylandartsource.org! This is the first issue of Maryland ArtMail, brought to you by the Baltimore Art Research & Outreach Consortium, or BAROC.

1) OUR FIRST MONTH IN ACTION: How folks are using the site.

2) FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Inquiries from living artists, and from institutions.

-- Our First Month in Action --

Maryland ArtSource has received hundreds of thousands of hits, with more than 6,000 users having spent an average of more than ten minutes in the site. Needless to say, we are pleased with the reception of the site. While many folks, such as curators at small museums, are using the site as expected to make attributions and determine where to research particular artists or art objects, we have been pleasantly surprised by other ways that it is being used. A professor of Revolutionary American history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison is using images from the Painting Collection of the Maryland Historical Society in her curriculum...and a watercolor artist living in Florida says the site served as a one-stop shop to the vibrant arts community in Maryland, helping her to feel more comfortable with her decision to move to the state to be closer to family.

-- Frequently Asked Questions --

A month after launching the site, we thought it appropriate to address some of the frequently asked questions in this first issue of Maryland ArtMail.

Q: I am an ambitious artist. Can I be added to the site in the Artists section?

A: BAROC is committed to serving living artists and the community by including Artist Profiles about their lives and works on the Maryland ArtSource site. However, our focus right now is to establish a solid foundation of profiles of "historic" artists represented in the collections of the partner institutions, while simultaneously convening a group from the art community to determine criteria for including living artists on Maryland ArtSource. We are maintaining a request log, so artists and their representatives should feel free to contact info@marylandartsource.org or (410) 516-7236 and request to be added to the list of people who will be notified about the outcome of these discussions.

Some people have inquired as to why more kinds of media are not included for browsing artists, such as "Installation." The site is designed to grow exponentially: an infinite number of art media/discipline categories are possible, and more will be added soon. Maryland ArtSource is an organic, "living" project.

Q: I represent an institution that you have wrongfully neglected. Why is our institution not listed in the Institutions section?

A: Maryland ArtSource was begun with the BAROC partner institutions listed in this feature of the site, and BAROC now wishes to include as many other institutions as possible. Non-profit institutions in Maryland that maintain art holdings or library holdings about art, or that participate in art or library programming, are welcome to contact info@marylandartsource.org to request an "Institution Profile Form," which is a Word document that must be completed by the institution in order to be entered into the Maryland ArtSource system. Now that we are up and running, we are making this form publicly available to as many qualified institutions as possible.

Keep us in mind as an outreach opportunity for visual art events, exhibitions and services! Our Web statistics show that Maryland ArtSource What's New articles are visited frequently by users. We can also duplicate announcements for events and such within future Maryland ArtMail messages if you are interested.

Until next month,

Sincerely,

The Baltimore Art Research & Outreach Consortium, info@marylandartsource.org