Thursday, August 10, 2000

Columbia's Fathom Site Attracts 4 More Prominent Partners By SCOTT CARLSON Four prominent educational, cultural, and research-oriented institutions have joined the for-profit distance-education Web site Fathom, the company announced Wednesday. Fathom is owned by Columbia University. The four institutions -- the University of Chicago, RAND, the American Film Institute, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution -- will provide content for the Fathom Web site, which will be available free to the public. The new member institutions bring to the venture a wide range of scholarly material that could be incorporated into the site. The University of Chicago could contribute, for instance, a database of French language and literature, as well as supercomputer simulations of exploding stars; the film institute could offer interviews with filmmakers; the oceanographic institute could contribute images of deep-sea life and notable shipwrecks, including the Titanic; and RAND might provide research on the effects of education reform on test scores. The four institutions are the newest members in a consortium that already includes the London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, the British Library, the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian Institution, and Columbia. One of Fathom's main features, according to company officials, will be a series of knowledge "trails," or links, between articles about related topics. Thus a study of the Great Depression might link an article about American economic history from a professor at the London School of Economics to archived material from the film institute about John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath. Fathom has yet to say when its Web site will open. Its home page promises that it will offer content by the end of the year, but Ann G. Kirschner, president of Fathom, said Wednesday that even that deadline is tentative. "I could say later this year, but it's something that a veteran of start-ups resists mightily," said Ms. Kirschner, who previously built Web sites for the National Football League. "When we're absolutely ready, we'll announce a launch date." Ms. Kirschner said that Fathom was cultivating yet more partners for the project, but she refused to name them. "We're beginning to fan out across the country, and eventually we'll have areas outside the U.S. and the U.K. as well," she said. She said that potential future partners will have strengths in natural history, the arts, and international finance. A partnership with Fathom will give the four new consortium participants an online platform for their researchers and faculty members, and it could also be a marketing tool for the sale of publications and online courses. Both incentives were attractive to Nick DeMartino, director of new media and strategic planning for the American Film Institute. "Obviously, A.F.I. benefits from association with such prestigious educators as Columbia, Cambridge, Chicago, and all of the rest," Mr. DeMartino said Wednesday. "Their site will have knowledge trails that will place A.F.I. content in the context of a larger body of global knowledge." An institute exhibit on Alfred Hitchcock, for example, might be enriched by a connection to the work of a film scholar at Columbia. Although the film institute will provide content for Fathom, it won't kick in money to support the venture, Mr. DeMartino said. As for making money from the Fathom partnership, "initially, I think that it will be a wash," Mr. DeMartino said. "But it will help build the brand. Where we see the revenue coming to A.F.I. is that as we create courses for which we'll charge, we'll have a global reach in the marketing. That's the principle value of Fathom -- it's a marketing cooperative." Robert J. Zimmer, deputy provost for research at the University of Chicago, said his institution didn't join Fathom to market the university or its courses. "I think the main benefit is the opportunity for faculty to disseminate materials," he said. Fathom will pay for the production costs of putting scholarly or research material online, and it will compensate professors or researchers who own such material. Mr. Zimmer said there were continuing "internal discussions" about whether the University of Chicago would help support Fathom financially, but he would not discuss details of those discussions. Background articles from The Chronicle: Going for Profit and Scholarship on the Web (5/5/2000) For-Profit Web Venture Seeks to Replicate the University Experience Online (4/14/2000) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Top 2 officials to step down at fledgling Colorado Institute of Technology Arctic is warmer than it has been in 400 years, study finds Federal agencies award $5.5-million for women's health research Online dormitories are already open for U. of Dayton freshmen Open U. officials want Jones International to give up copycat domain name Columbia's Fathom site attracts 4 more prominent partners