Using the Internet in Conservation Research

E-mail - Simply another way of communicating

Personal contact amongst individuals
Direct person-to-person e-mail
Contact between researchers/practitioners worldwide
Open, closed or moderated discussion lists, e.g.
conservation-research on Jiscmail
transport-conservation on Jiscmail
arch-metals on Jiscmail
The skillsnetwork group on Yahoo! Groups
Cons DistList
texcons for textile conservators

Newsgroups - One format of group discussion

Enables less formal interaction with professionals/amateurs in many fields, and can be used either via a Web interface i.e. Google Groups at http://groups.google.com/ or using specific newsreading software. The moderated groups will be the only ones that are likely to be totally free of "junk" traffic.

World Wide Web - the near ubiquitous interface

Finding people and resources, but remember that not everything is trustworthy!

Messageboards/Chatrooms/IRC channels e.g.
ICON Forum
Yahoo! Groups Web features
Historical Clock and Watch Research Bulletin Board
Information Pages, Conservation Organisations, etc
Museum exhibitions and displays; training course information; Societies and Institutions; CoOL; conservation/restoration companies; etc. Check out 'Links' pages on these sites.
Bibliographic Services, Library Catalogues, E-journals e.g.
AATA: Art & Archaeology Technical Abstracts
BCIN: Conservation Information Network Bibliographic Database
Index of Theses
OPACs - on-line public access catalogues
Electronic Table of Contents (zetoc)
JSTOR
Google Scholar; Google Books
Cultural Resource Management
Museum Catalogues and Datasets etc e.g.
Imperial War Museum Collections Online Database
London Transport Museum Photographic Collection
Hampshire Museum Service Catalogue
Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Catalogue
Petrie Museum, UCL
Archaeology Data Service Holdings
Beilstein CrossFire - a chemical information system
EDINA (Edinburgh Data and Information Access)
The Internet History Sourcebooks - collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts
Search Engines and Portals - general and specialised, including people searching e.g.
Google
AltaVista
Babelfish - AltaVista's translation server
Yahoo! UK & Ireland (actually a directory)
Mamma
MetaCrawler
Cultural Heritage Search Engine
CoOL's Finding People section
ARGE - Archaeological Resource Guide to Europe
HERO - Directories of Network and Reference Resources etc
BUBL - Internet Resources and Journals etc
Publisher, equipment, product and materials information e.g.
Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann
Routledge
James & James/Earthscan
Maney
RS Components
CAMEO (Conservation and Art Material Encyclopedia Online)
Merck UK Ltd
RSC Chemical Safety Datasheets
Chemfinder database

Example On-Line Research Scenario 1 (online)

Example On-Line Research Scenario 2 (online)

Links Page