Articles by Donna Kurtz

Over nearly four decades the Beazley Archive has developed from a personal archive, whose origins were rooted in 19th century classical scholarship, to a state-of-the-art electronic resource that can be used anywhere, at any time by anyone. The challenges along the way are noted and the ways they were met, in the hope of inspiring others to persevere. The first decade was "organisational", the second saw the adoption of ICT, the third was dominated by participation in EU R and D projects in telecommunications, and the fourth by the Vision of CLAROS - Classical Art Research Online Services. Since this lecture was given in autumn 2008 the CLAROS Vision has become a reality: by August 2009 more than two million records and images were integrated virtually using CIDOC-CRM. By adopting an ISO programme developed under the aegis of UNESCO for ICOM, the International Council of Museums, and by enhancing it with Open Source software, CLAROS offers a platform that any museum or research institute with digital assets can use free of charge for the public benefit. As the Beazley Archive approaches its fifth decade, it looks forward to collaborating for the advancement of scholarship and dissemination of results to the global community.

This article offers a summary of the Oxford University's Beazley Archive of Classical Archaeology and Art work since 1999 (for the period 1988 to 1999 see the tenth volume of this journal). The most important developments have been the migration of all of the Archive's databases and educational programmes on to the web (www.beazley.ox.ac.uk); the diversification of materials studied and methods of presentation; the imminent amalgamation of more than twenty databases into one searchable master dataset. This five-year summary is divided into three parts: the first part relates to the content and presentation of the Beazley Archive, with particular reference to the Pottery Database and the recent three-year project to digitise the CVA volumes for the web, which was granted to the Beazley Archive by the Union Académique Internationale; the second part relates to the technical structure of the datasets, storage and back up facilities and the third part relates to the nature and extent of the Archive's electronic assets and their relation to others in the University of Oxford.

The author offers a summary of the research work carried out over the last decade at the Beazley Archive, which consists of two inter-related parts: a traditional paper archive and electronic programs. The electronic programs began in 1979 with a database of Athenian figure-decorated pottery. The structure of the database was based on extensive “catalogues”, which Beazley had compiled and published in many editions from the 1920s through the 1960s. Since 1992 the Beazley Archive has been able to include in its electronic services other types of objects Sir John Beazley had recorded in his personal archive, for example, sculpture and engraved gems. In 1998 the Beazley Archive was selected as a suitable site for testing new techniques of watermarking and digital finger-printing; with the availability of several means of image protection the Beazley Archive launched a multimedia version of the pottery database on the Web. With the experience gained from adapting the pottery database for the Web, the Beazley Archive has taken the decision to use this platform for programs about other types of classical archaeology and art.