Call for Responses and Ideas

[Virginia Tech]

          Request to All Subscribers to "Watermarks"
                    from Bob Allison & Jim Hart

We have begun to receive, from a few members of this discussion group, 
some 
very good and thoughtful feedback raising substantive questions.  The 
resulting discussion is helping us as we move into phase two in the 
development of a WWW-based system of archives of paper and watermarks, 
that 
is refinement and revision of our starting model and development of 
functions like data input and searching.  Many thanks are due to Tomas 
Stohr, David Woodward, Gerard van Thienen and others who have devoted 
time and 
effort to making valuable contributions.

In the past few weeks these responses have raised issues about

    - indication of right and left in watermark descriptions,
    - a standard for dealing with felt & mold sides,
    - description of government (Spanish) registry stamps,
    - coordination of the www database design with IPH,
    - use of graphic indices as opposed to IPH codes, and
    - ambiguities in the IPH coded watermark descriptions,

to mention only some of the major topics.

This is a call to all members of the discussion list to make your 
thoughts,
and questions known by sending them in to this discussion group,
at:
     watermarks@ebbs.english.vt.edu

We need your responses in order to decide how best to serve the interests
of all of you as we work on refining and improving our database design and
as we continue building a working system.

For those who didn't make a note of it, the WWW address for the Watermark 
Initiative, where you can review the model, is:

http://www.bates.edu/Faculty/wmarchive/wm-initiative/


Bob Allison                    Jim Hart
Classical & Medieval Studies   Information Services
Bates College                  Bates College
rallison@bates.edu             jhart@bates.edu