Director

Director may refer to:

Roles

Business

Arts

Curator

A curator (from Latin: curare, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material. A traditional curator's concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort—artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators have started to emerge: curators of digital data objects and biocurators.

Curator responsibilities

In smaller organizations, a curator may have sole responsibility for acquisitions and even collections care. The curator makes decisions regarding what objects to select, oversees their potential and documentation, conducts research based on the collection and history, provides proper packaging of art for transportation, and shares that research with the public and community through exhibitions and publications. In very small, volunteer-based museums such as local historical societies a curator may be the only paid staff member.

Director (military)

A director, also called an auxiliary predictor, is a mechanical or electronic computer that continuously calculates trigonometric firing solutions for use against a moving target, and transmits targeting data to direct the weapon firing crew.

For warships

For warships of the 20th century, the director is part of the fire control system; it passes information to the computer that calculates range and elevation for the guns. Typically, positions on the ship measured range and bearing of the target; these instantaneous measurements are used to calculate rate of change values, and the computer ("fire control table" in Royal Navy terms) then predicts the correct firing solution, taking into account other parameters, such as wind direction, air temperature, and ballistic factors for the guns. In World War II a widely used computer in the US Navy was the electro-mechanical Mark I Fire Control Computer.

On ships the director control towers for the main battery are placed high on the superstructure, where they have the best view. Due to their large size and weight, in the World War II era the computers were located in plotting rooms deep in the ship, below the armored deck on armored ships.