Abstracts:

Although the problem of the standardizing of cultural heritage objects’ descriptions has been discussed for a long time, a major step has been done at the development of new information technologies in the field of culture and, especially, at the presentation of culture objects in the Internet.

At the annual ADIT meetings, speakers repeatedly illustrated one or other aspect of the standardizing of cultural heritage objects’ descriptions, but only in 2000 a whole section “Standards – the base of understanding“ was devoted to the problem.

In the end of 1999 the “Open Society” Institute (Soros’s Foundation – Russia) started the realization of the Strategy of cultural heritage net support. One of priorities is to develop standards for cultural heritage objects’ descriptions.
Four projects took grants:
 Short description of immovable historical and cultural monuments (State Institute of Art)
 Short description of museum’s object: informational-linguistics equipment (State Historic Museum)
 Development of landscape’s format as an object of cultural heritage net (Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage)
 GIS format of description for archeological monuments (group of authors).

As experts from several Russian museums - ADIT members participated in the project “Short description of museum’s object: informational-linguistics equipment”, it can be named as ADIT -project. Its goal is a standard of short museum-object description (label), common for all museums independently of their field. Such goal is result of the strategy to develop Russian cultural heritage net and to present the data of museums’ collections in the net. The descriptions of museum’s objects, realized according to the developed standard, will be presented in the Internet and become widely available.

In the beginning of 2001 ADIT и АНОК “The Museum of the Future” with the support of the “Open Society” Institute organized expert seminar “Standards for descriptions of cultural heritage objects” (Gorki Leninskie, February, 16-18, 2001). Among participants were:
 represents of four above listed groups, which elaborated standards for descriptions of cultural heritage objects during the year;
 officials of federal and regional cultural institutions and different cultural organizations;
 participants of projects on the informational resources in the field of cultural heritage from Moscow St. Petersburg, Vladimir, Izhevsk, Kemerovo, N. Novgorod, Omsk, Perm’, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Rybinsk, and Yaroslavl’.
A goal of the workshop was to work out the instruction “Short description of cultural heritage objects” and to present recommendations for its following perfection and application.
Based on detailed analysis of Russian and international experience the Seminar participants offered a model of common standard for short description (Label) of various cultural heritage objects, including museums’ collections, monuments of archeology, architecture, and cultural landscapes. The label includes 5 obligatory fields (name, locality, typology, period, and dating) and 9 additional fields (author/researcher, number, material and techniques, parameters, short description, and comments, investigation, status of ownership and protection). The expert assesment of the Label was carried out from different users’ position: controllers, tourists, virtual visitors, and pupils, and students.

The standard “Short description of cultural heritage objects” is used during realization of some regional projects:
 «Interregional Internet – cultural tourism guide” (Nizhni Novgorod);
 «Regional Informational Net of cultural heritage» (St. Petersburg);
 «Everything of Yaroslavl’ Museums» (Yaroslavl’);
 «The Best from Museums of Kuzbass» (Kemerovo);
 «Siberian Kazak fortified Lines» (Оmsk).

The materials of the expert seminar and offers of authors of standards for «Museum item», «Archeology», «Architecture, and «Cultural Landscape» are including in «Culture: modernization policy», part 2, compilers: Е.С. Кuz’min, А.V. Lebedev, and L.Ya. Nol’, Pskov-Moscow, 2001.