Global Memory Net - History

History

Global Memory Net superseded Chinese Memory Net (CMNet), which was founded in 2001 as a NSF/IDLP project. It was intended to make Chinese cultural and heritage resources globally accessible in a multimedia format. "The experiences and knowledge gained from made me realize the need to rethink the model for information dissemination and use," wrote Prof. Chen in 2001. CMNet later expanded to represent global collections and officially became Global Memory Net in 2003.

GMNet's initial collection starts with the invaluable images included in Prof. Chen's interactive videodisc and multimedia CD-ROM, entitled The First Emperor of China on the First Emperor of China's 7000+ terracotta warriors and horses. These are products of her earlier PROJECT EMPEROR-I, supported by the US National Endowment for the Humanities (1983–1986). The selective images of this project became the core collection of Chinese Memory Net (CMNet) and is named "Emperor Collection" in GMNet. Since 2002, the project's scope has expanded quickly to cover many countries' cultural collections.

Much of these unique collections are of great value to education and research and are not currently accessible due to distance, form, and technical barriers. This project is intended to find new ways to enable users to access and exploit these significant collections via the global network. Each collaborator of this complimentary and synergetic group possesses experience, knowledge, expertise, and capability in different but related research area(s). Each contributes either part of its superb culture and heritage collection, or cutting-edge techniques to facilitate the image retrieval.

GMNet‘s Collection is constantly growing, and its system and interface design are continually being upgraded and modified to take advantage of improvements in technology. Since September 2010, these activities have been supported by Global Connection and Collaboration, Inc. (GlobalCC).