Consideration of information technology as a tool for arts managers began in the spring of 1994. At that time, a team of students from the MAM Program and the Master of Science (MS) Program at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management proposed a year-long management project for the 1995/96 academic year to investigate the feasibility and usefulnessof the emerging World Wide Web as a resource and services tool for arts managers. During that process, ArtsNet was created; it was one of the first sophisticated Web sites dealing with management challenges and opportunities in arts and culture organizations. This prototype site included a searchable database of state arts agency funding activity, homepages of a number of local arts organizations and arts agencies, a "town hall" site for the posting and discussion of current issues in the arts, a career services center where job seekers could post resumes and organizations could post job openings, an index of arts and arts-related Web sites across the globe, and a directory of other Web sites that might be valuable information resources for artists and arts managers.

The ArtsNet project was successful beyond all expectations. The website attracted the attention of a national audience in both the arts and information technology communities. Soon after presenting the project's final report, members of the team were approached by Philip Horn, executive director of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA), about the possibility of a team of students, alumni and/or faculty assisting the PCA in reorganizing and restructuring its data collection, management and distribution systems, and developing an "electronic" grant application form. A grant of $20,000 was awarded to the MAM Program for the data management/application project in the summer of 1995. A key component of the project was the facilitationof easy access to public funding data; the project undertaken by the MAM Program included a system for exporting funding data to a searchable databaseon the PCA web site. MAM Program faculty demonstrated alpha versions of the data management/application project to state arts agency representatives at an annual meeting of all state arts agencie in November, 1995, and approximately a dozen agencies expressed interest in participating in any future undertakings related to these tools.

Over the course of the 1995/96 academic year, while all of the activity mentioned above was underway, another series of opportunities presented themselves. First, the MAM Program purchased its first dedicated Web server. Second, Arts Wire, the New York Foundation for the Arts' national on-line telecommunications service for artists and arts organizations, contacted the MAM Program about the possibility of collaborating on technology development projects. Third, Jane Alexander, then chairman of the NEA, made a special trip to Carnegie Mellon to see a demonstration of the work being done by the MAM Program with information technology.

The MAM Program negotiated a arrangement that would provide space on its server for ArtsWire in exchange for joint research work on information technology and Arts Wire staff participation as adjunct faculty in courses dealing with the arts and technology issues. Word of this collaboration between Arts Wire and the MAM Program prompted the additional attention and interest of the public and private funders in the work both agencies were doing. The demand for study and work in the area of information technology and the arts quickly outgrew the informal structure that existed. The PCA data management/application project was undertaken with the technical assistance of several outside contractors who were handling the system programming and related utilities. Project management was left to Dan J. Martin, Director of the MAM Program, who had to oversee the working team as well maintain his regular commitments to the academic program and its related services. The process was not as smooth as all participants would have preferred. As the scope of work and resources expanded, successful and productive outcomes of these various projects and partnerships required a more organized and clearly identifiable and articulated structure. The Carnegie Mellon Center for Arts Management and Technology (CAMT) was established in late 1997 to provide the proper organizational foundation on which to build currentand future research and service projects, and it is a far more visible and appropriate site for attracting both the interest of research partners and project funders.

Today, CAMT has five full-time employees and more than a half-dozen graduate research assistants. CAMT's five Web servers host the web sites more than 300 cultural institutions, national and international, and provide a number of support services for those sites. Since its establishment in those "pioneer days" of the Web, CAMT has been assisted many artists and arts organizations in embracing the opportunities offered by information technology. Most notably, CAMT developed the first online, Web-based grants application system -- eGrant^sm -- which is used today by 17 state and local arts agencies as well as private foundations. For many funders and cultural organizations, eGrant demonstrated the value and importance of technology as a data management, decision-making and communications tool.

Applied research continues on eGrant and on other data management systems -- including on-line course registration programs for performing and visual arts organizations, artists registries, job banks and calendar systems -- as CAMT staff seek further ways of bringing effective and efficient technology solutions to the cultural field.