Glossary

If acronyms have got you confused, use this heritage glossary to find out what they all mean. We have included full names and websites of many organizations and initiatives to help connect you with the resources and partners you need to succeed.

Abbreviations	English Defn. (If available)
AACRII	Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition
AAT	Art & Architecture Thesaurus
AC	Artefacts Canada
ACS	Association for Canadian Studies
ACSQ	Association des cadres scolaires du Québec
ADD	Archives Descriptive Database
ADR	Alternative Dispute Resolution
ADSL	Asymmetrical digital subscriber line
AGB	Alexander Graham Bell (Museum)
AGO	Art Gallery of Ontario
AI	Artificial Intelligence
ALAI	L'Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale
ALI-ABA	American Law Institute - American Bar Association
ALT	Alternative
ALV	File format
AMA	Alberta Museums Association
AMIA	Association for Moving Image Archivists
AMICO	Art Museum Image Consortium
AMM	Association of Manitoba Museums
AMNH	American Museum of Natural History
AMOL	Australian Museums & Galleries Online
AMTA	Association for Machine Translation in the Americas
APTICA	Avancement pédagogique des technologies de l’information et de la communication en Atlantique
ARI	Agora Research Initiative
ARS	Artist Rights Society
ARTIFICE	Archeological Research Terminal for Independent Cultural Explorations
ASCII	American Standard Code for Information Interchange
BCMA	British Columbia Museums Association
BGS	Bowne Global Solutions
bit	Binary digit
BMP	Bitmap
byte	Binary term
CAIN	Canadian Archival Information Network
CAN	Collections Australia Network
CANCOPY	Canadian National Reprography Collective
CAPAC	Canadian Authors and Publishers Association of Canada
CARFAC	Canadian Artists Representation
CAROL	Canadian Artists Represented Online
CASC	Canadian Association of Science Centres
CCI	Canadian Conservation Institute
CCO	Cataloguing Cultural Objects
CCO	Canadian Culture Online
CDMA	Code Division Multiple Access
CD-ROM	Compact Disk – Read Only Memory
CDWA	Categories for the Description of Works of Art
CHIN	Canadian Heritage Information Network
CHIO	Cultural Heritage Information Online
Chtml	Compact Hypertext Markup Language
CIDOC	The International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums.
CIMI	Computer Interchange of Museum Information
CIN	Conservation Information Network
CIPA	Centre d'interprétation des pionniers de l'aviation
CIRA	Canadian Internet Registration Authority
CMA	Canadian Museums Association
CMAPEI	Community Museums Association of Prince Edward Island
CMC	Canadian Museum of Civilization
CMCC	Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation
CMDR	Canadian Museums Digital Repository
CMRRA	Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency
CMSR	Collections Management Software Review
CMSS	Collections Management Software Selection
CNSLP	Canadian National Site Licensing Project
COM	Microsoft Component Object Model
CPU	Central Processing Unit
QC	Quality Control
CRC	Communications Research Centre Canada
CRC	Cultural Resources Center
CRIA	Canadian Recording Industry Association Inc.
CRMP	Cultural Resource Management Program
CSD	Circuit Switched Data
CSS	Cascading Style Sheets
CTHS	Cumberland Township Historical Society
DAT	Digital Audio Tape
dCCF	digital Cultural Content Forum
DCH	Department of Canadian Heritage
DCS	Digital Conversion Services
DCT	Discrete Cosine Transformation
DDE	Dynamic Data Exchange
dHTML	Dynamic HTML
DL	Definition list
DLPS	Digital Library Production Service
DLSR	Digital single-lens reflex camera
DLT	Digital Linear Tape
DMC	Director's Management Committee
DMCA	Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DPC	Digital Preservation Coalition
DPI	Dots per inch
DRMS	Digital rights management systems
DSL	Digital Subscriber Line
DVD	Digital Versatile Disc
DwC	Darwin Core
EAMTA	European Association for Machine Translation
EBCDIC	Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code
EM	Emphasis
EPOC	An operating system
EPS	Encapsulated PostScript file format
ERPANET	Electronic Resource Preservation and Access Network
ETCATA	Educational Technology Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
EVA	European Visual Archive
FAI	Fonds de l’autoroute de l’information
FLAR	Federal Law on Author's Rights
FNSH	Federation of Nova Scotian Heritage
FTP	File Transfer Protocol
GATT	General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GB	Gigabyte
GIF	Graphic Image File format
GLP	General Public Licence
GOL	Government Online
GPRS	General Packet Radio Service
GPS	Global Positioning Satellites [Global Positioning System]
GSM	Global System for Mobile Communications
HEDS	Higher Education Digitization Service
HILT	High-Level Thesaurus
HRSDC	Human Resources and Skills Development Canada
HTML	Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP	HyperText Transfer Protocol
ICANN	Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICOM	International Council of Museums
ICT	Information and communications technologies
IEEE	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
ILL	Inter-library loan
IM/IT Solutions	Information Management/Information Technology Solutions
IMLS	Institute of Museum and Library Services
IP	Internet Protocol
IP	Intellectual Property
ISDN	Integrated Services Digital Network
ISO	International Organization for Standardization
ISP	Internet service providers
ITCP	Information Technology and Creative Practices
JCDL	Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
JISC	Joint Information Systems Committee
JPEG	Joint Photographic Experts Group
KB	Kilobyte
Kbits/s (KBPS)	Kilobits per second
LAN	Local Area Network
LCD	Liquid Crystal Display
LEAF	Linking and Exploring Authority Files
M2A	MINISIS Management for Archives
M2L	MINISIS Management for Libraries
M3	MINISIS Management for Museums
MACM	Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
MANL	Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador
MAS	Museums Association of Saskatchewan
MB	Megabyte
Mbits/s (MBPS)	Megabits per second
McMichael	McMichael Canadian Collection
MESL	Museum Educational Site Licensing
METS	Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
MHz	Megahertz
MINISIS SMA	Standard MINISIS Application
MINT	MINISIS Integrator
MIT	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MLA	Museums Libraries and Archives Council
MMS	Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
MoA	Making of America
MOV	Movie or video file format
MPEG	Moving Picture Experts Group
MQ	Musée du Québec [now, properly, Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec]
MT	Machine Translation
MT/CAT	Machine Translation/Computer-assisted translation
MW 2008	Museums and the Web 2008
MWI	MINISIS Web Interface
NAIG	North American Indigenous Games
NASA	National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NDIIP	National Digital Information Infrastructure Program
NDL	National Digital Library
NEDLIB	Networked European Deposit Library
NINCH	National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage
NIP	National Inventory Programme
NKOS	Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services
NMAI	National Museum of the American Indian
NRC	National Research Council Canada
NYPL	New York Public Library
OAI	Open Archives Initiative
OCLC	Online Computer Library Centre
OCR	Optical Character Recognition
OCSB	Ottawa-Carleton School Board Conference
OL	Ordered list
OLE	Object Linking and Embedding
OMA	Ontario Museum Association
OMSI	Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
PADI	Preserving Access to Digital Information
PC	Personal Computer
PCMCIA	Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
PCS	Personal Communications Service
PCT	Image file format
PCX	Image file format
PDA	Personal digital assistant
PDF	Portable Document Format
PHP	HTML-embedded scripting language
PNG	Portable Network Graphic
PNI	Picture Information Network
ppi	Pixels per inch
PREMIS	PREservation Implementation Strategies
PROCAN	Performing Rights Organization of Canada
PSD	File format
PTM	Public Technologies Multimedia
PURLs	Persistent URLs
PwC	PricewaterhouseCoopers
RAD	Rules for Archival Description
RAD	Rapid Application Development
RALI	Recherche Appliquée en Linguistique Informatique
RAM	Random-access memory
RAW	Initial Image File
RBI	Research and Business Intelligence
RDBMS	Relational Database Management Software
RFID	Radio Frequency Identification
RGB	Red, Green, Blue
RITS	Registration Information Tracking System
RLG	Research Libraries Group
ROI	Return on investment
ROM	Royal Ontario Museum
ROM	Read-only memory
RSS	Really Simple Syndication
SAN	Storage Area Network
SCG	Statistical Consultation Group
SFMOMA	San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
SGML	Standard Generalized Markup Language
SIG	Systems Integration Group
SMQ	Société des musées québécois
SMS	Short Message Service
SOCAN	Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada
SPA	Software Publishers Association
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer
SVG	Scalable Vector Graphics
TASI	Technical Advisory Service for Images
TAUM	Traduction automatique à l'Université de Montréal
TERLA	The Electronic Rights Licensing Agency
TGN	Thesaurus of Geographic Names
TIFF	Tagged Information File Format
TLC	The Learning Coalition
TMS	The Museum System
TRIPS	Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
TTF	True Type Font
UCITA	Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
UL	Unordered list
ULAN	Union List of Artist Names
UMTS	Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
UNC	University of North Carolina
UNESCO	United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
URL	Uniform Resource Locator
URNs	Universal Resource Names
USB	Universal Serial Bus
UVic	University of Victoria
VAGA	Visual Arts and Galleries Association
VERS	Victorian Electronic Records Srategy
VMC	Virtual Museum of Canada
VMFA	Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
VoIP	Voice over Internet Protocol
VR	Virtual Reality
W3C	World Wide Web Consortium
WAN	Wide Area Network
WAP	Wireless Application Protocol
WAV	Sound file format
WBS	Work Breakdown Structure
WCAG	Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
WebCGM	Computer Graphics Metafile
Wi-Fi	Wireless fidelity
WIPO	World Intellectual Property Organization
WLAN	Wireless Local Area Network
WML	Wireless Markup Language
WTO	World Trade Organization
WWW	World Wide Web
XHTML	Extensible Hypertext Markup Language
XHTML MP	Extensible Hypertext Markup Language Mobile Profile
XML	Extensible Markup Language
YCW	Young Canada Works
YES	Youth Employment Strategy
YHMA	Yukon Historical and Museums Association