The Subject is the Subject of Images

Pig from Bath, England. Photo Credit: Marcio Cabral de Moura

Proprietary digital art collections make me mad.  As do all the art resources online that cost money.  It’s my open source, information should be free, mentality, I guess.  I understand that everyone needs to make a living, and that it takes time and resources to put together and maintain a digital collection.  I don’t have an answer to this paradox.  But I didn’t say I did.  Nevertheless it makes me mad.

Here is an example: The art-public.com online library. As described on its website it “focuses on the role of art in urban projects.  Recent creations and works in progress are organized by category and illustrated with examples from around the world, with an emphasis on the principal cities of Europe.”   The website also claims that “all subjects feature examples of artwork with commentary and color photo illustrations.”   A list of the types of works included is at the end of this article.

With respect to the main subject of Ofness, the searchability of the art in the collection, the following information is provided.  “Information is stocked in a database structured around three index fields – artist, location and commissioning sponsors – which provide access to representative articles including practical description of artwork (artist, title, year, location…).  This information is complemented by a collection of images.  Each work of art is illustrated with up to six color photos; commentary is provided in several languages.   Through the SIGAP [System of Information and Administration of Public Art] system, the database can be accessed via keywords.” [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Art, art-public.com, Bath England, Digital art, Flickr, Metadata, pig, Public art, SIGAP, Visual Arts

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JISC and TASI

The Image Sites Database of TASI, a project of JISC in Bristol, England,  is one of the best I have found.

I still haven’t been able to find out what TASI stands for, but JISC is the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a government funded organization which seeks to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research.  “The aspiration of TASI is to ensure that digital media resources being created, used and managed within the further and higher education community meet the teaching, learning and research needs of individuals and institutions within the UK.”

The image sites database is only one part of TASI, which is itself a small part of JISC , but given the narrow focus of this blog it is the only part I’m addressing.  TASI, you should know, is an indespensilbe resource for every aspect of digital imaging.  In addition to the Web site which fully describes all the other resources, it offers [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Collection Portal, Digital Collections, Image Sites Database of TASI, JISC, Joint Information Systems Committee

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Social Tagging of Art.  What a brilliant concept.  That’s STEVE.

I first heard a presentation about the Steve project several years ago at Metropolitan New York Library Council.  The presenters said that the name “steve” had no meaning and was just pulled out of the hat.  Can’t help thinking, though, that S(ocial) T(agging) had something to do with it.  In any case STEVE: The Museum Social Tagging Project continues and the site has evolved and improved.

Steve is “a collaboration of museum professionals and others who are interested in using social tagging to enhance access to museum collections and engage visitors with collections. We build open source software (the steve tagger), advocate for social tagging methods, and do research into the effectiveness of tagging. You can read much more about our work, which is funded, in part, by grants from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, at www.steve.museum.”

The online Steve tagger can be used by anyone.  Thousands of works have been contributed for this purpose by 17 major art museums including the Metropolitan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Tate Modern, and the Dallas Museum of Art.  Several of these museum have installed interfaces on site for museum visitors to try out tagging.

In the Objects tab each is represented by a thumbnail and I love that you can select “infinite” and have the application load thumbnails (13 across on my browser) which just keep coming.  (see above)  Painting, drawings, sculpture, decorative objects, text, textiles, photography, are all included.  All periods.  All parts of the world.  It’s a treasure trove. If you are patient you can see all objects in Steve on a single screen. (At least they were continuing to load for a full hour after I pulled the page up with no sign of abating.)

In the Terms tab the tags assigned by users can be viewed in a list or in a tag cloud with the words you personally have added highlighted in red.  It’s hard for me to believe that the ones listed constitute the full list, but but there is no indication otherwise.

You can browse by the tags, by collection, and by “set,” a fairly eclectic group that includes “I’m in the mood for love” and “WTF?.”  Here’s an image from the latter:

Once you hone in on a particular object it you can see it in larger formats, which while not full screen, are more generous than at other actual museum sites. The museum’s metadata for the object is also available, and you can look at “More object like this” and see what sets it is included in.  If you register (free) you can add tags of your own, save collections,  and make them private or public.

Some of the tagging is quite object focused: tree, chair, bread, cane, etc. Some simply repeats information already available in the metadata, artist, period, or object type.  But many tags aim to convey other aspects of the visual experience, feelings (graceful, scary), and associated  impressions (circular, swirly), for instance.

The tagging system does not allow you to use the conventional feature of enclosing a multi word phrase in quotes in order to save it as a phrase.  So you will find a lot of tags in which several words are strung together:  “purplerug”, for example,  not “purple rug”. In some cases this may be due to a lack of understanding on the part of the user of how tagging works.  But even someone who knows can’t do it right.   This seems to be a pretty critical function for a tool intended to tag visual items.  How else to apply an adjective to a single object in the image or to a part of it?

In any event some of the resulting tags are are bit unusual:

• anactresslongforgotten
• asiflookingfromawindow
• asifyouwereclimbingup
• harvest
• hassheeverkilledanyone
• wannagointheblackdoor
• white
• whiteandblueporcelainbowl
• whitebarn
• whitepigmentonlyatcollar

But that is part of the point.  To see how non-experts identify images and what kinds of things they focus on, and what sorts of terms they use.

Tagging has become familiar to uses through Flickr and other tools.  A sensitivity to what terms help with findability is growing in the average person.  Learning how well that translates to the world of art objects, and how it complements traditional metadata, will be interesting to see.

It is a revealing experience to seek for words that convey the contents of image.  The inadequacy of words becomes so clear.  On the other hand, by persisting in finding every descriptive word that comes to mind, one actually sees so much more.

Steve has produced a number of reports evaluating the project, has a wiki, and provides more background information. A three-year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) funding Steve in Action: Social Tagging Tools and Methods Applied, a project to further develop the Steve tagging application, is scheduled to conclude in October, 2011.

Tagged as: Image search, Library and Information Science, museum, steve project, tagging

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When I first began delving into online access to images, I focused on copyright and other practical issues.  Ultimately my interest turned to the actual retrieval of images.  I read a lot online, including journal articles and books.  Gradually I began to get the lay of the land and learned the lingo.  It was quite a while before I discovered Introduction to Art Image Access, edited by Murtha Baca, but when I did I knew that this was the place I should have started.

Having come from searching inside the forest it was a revelation.  I don’t regret my path, having a penchant for doing things the hard way and for the search itself.  But for anyone curious about the subject this is where I would suggest starting.  It is a clear, consise, and comprehensive introduction to the “subject of images” in the context of providing access to the images.   This online publication, which is also available in print, “addresses the issues that underlie the intellectual process of documenting a visual collection to make it accessible in an electronic environment” and is one of several Data Standards and Guidelines the Getty makes available for free.

It consists of four main essays: Subject Access to Art Images, The Language of Images, It Begins with the Cataloguer, and  The Image User and the Search for Images.   It also contains an annotated List of Tools, a Glossary, and a Selected Bibliography.  Each of the essays is illustrated with a number of images which are integral to the text.  These concrete examples of the concepts described are one of strongest points of the book.    Each essay is under 15 pages and is packed with valuable information.  Each subsection, and even, on occasion, each paragraph makes assertions or poses questions that could provide the basis for a full college course.

Together these essays provide a kind of blueprint for navigating the world of digital image management at the back end with the front end in mind.   It is aimed at a wide range of visual resources professionals.   Anyone who goes on to become an art historian, curator or cataloger will end up delving deeply into many of the topics mentioned here.

What can one take away from this set of essays?  Here are a handful of what I deem to be the most important points with respect to subject matter analysis, with full credit to the author, and apologies for any simplification:

• Images are are always of a specific instance of something.  This characteristic of images makes it particularly important to provide access to a subject of an image at as many points as possible within the range of terms that can describe or identify that subject.
• That subjects includes activities, events, persons, objects, place and time.
• The difference between description and identification.
• Subject can be described using a continuum of terms from the broadly generic to the relatively specific.
• The difference between ofness and aboutness
• That about-ness can be seen as an essential element of subject analysis of some art.
• That about-ness may be more tenuous, less clear, and perhaps even an unnecessary element of subject analysis.
• Index anything that is clearly depicted
• Index anything that is not clearly depicted if the mere fact of its presence in the image is informative
• Do not index parts of a whole if the whole is indexed and the parts are implicit in it.
• Whenever a work of art is about a literary work, provide access through the name of that literary work.
• That an art image may be not only a work of art itself but also an image of another work of art.
• Using consistent vocabulary promotes recall of relevant images; providing the means for organizing the retrieval based on category promotes precision.
• Categories can be differentiated from one another by placing them in different fields in a database record or otherwise identifying them as different metadata elements.
• The depth of subject analysis depends on the knowledge of the indexer .
• The goals or focus of a particular institution can also affect depth of indexing.
• Use controlled vocabularies, guidelines for subject analysis, and even checklists or picklists of possible subject aspects.
• Use a vocabulary with a syndetic structure that provides good links from the broadest to the narrowest terms, links that lead from the generic to the specific, like thesauri.
• Any given image may be of interest to different disciplines with different vocabularies.
• The ultimate goal is retrieval.

The Getty Standards and Digital Resource Management Program

Introduction to Art Image Access is only one of several valuable tools that the Getty makes available for the benefit of the entire field.  Here’s how they describe this aspect of their operations and their other publications.

The Getty Standards and Digital Resource Management Program works to enhance access to information on the visual arts and related disciplines by promoting standards and practices and developing tools and guidelines for developing, managing, preserving, and delivering information in electronic form. The complete Data Standards and Guidelines list and description from the Getty site follows.

Categories for the Description of Works of Art
Guidelines for the description of art objects and images, including a discussion of issues involved in building art information systems.

A Guide to the Description of Architectural Drawings
Guidelines, conventions, and standards for describing architectural drawings and documents, with examples and recommendations for authority files and controlled vocabularies.

Introduction to Archival Organization and Description
An introduction to the principles of organization and description used in archives and archival collections.

Introduction to Art Image Access
An online publication that addresses the issues that underlie the intellectual process of documenting a visual collection to make it accessible in an electronic environment.

Introduction to Imaging (Revised Edition)
An online publication that introduces the technology of digital imaging and creating an image library.

Introduction to Metadata (revised edition 3.0)
An online publication devoted to metadata, its types and uses, and how it can improve access to digital resources.

Metadata Standards Crosswalk
A mapping of elements from different metadata schemas to facilitate semantic interoperability and cross-repository searching.

Introduction to Vocabularies
An overview of thesauri and other structured vocabularies used to provide access to art and material culture information.

Digitized Library Collections
Groupings of records, most linked to images, representing objects from the special collections of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, accompanied by contextual and historical information.

Here is the place to start your studies if this stuff turns you on.

Tagged as: "subject matter cataloging", aboutness, Art, Art history, controlled vocabulary, Getty Images, Literature, Metadata, ofness, Visual Arts, Work of art

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The new LIFE photo archive hosted by Google is a rich trove of images dating back to the 1750′s.  Google has opened up the archive to the public and ultimately it will contain over 10,000,000 images, most of which have never been published.   This is an exciting and amazing digital collection and Google is to be praised for its continued adherence to  its “mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”   The images may be used for non commerical purposes without any speial permission.

Aside from the enormous scope of the collection, Goggle is making available relatively large versions of these images.   From what I can see, the majority of images are available with one side equal to or larger than 1280 px.  This size easily  fills the screen of the majority of computer monitors.  While not high resolution, this size does allow users to see the image in enough detail to examine and use it for a number of purposes.   In contrast, many museum sites offer far lower resolution images of the works of art they make available in their digital collections.

India's Caste System Indian Prince of Berar of the Kshatryis caste, a mighty hunter & heir to the throne of Hyderabad, posing next to taxidermic specimen of the elephant he shot, in the game room of his palace.

Unfortunately it has some significant limitations and is a bit of a disappointment, as reported in the New York Times by Virginia Heffernan on February 27, 2009 .   Although it contains “millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today,” and is obviously a rich trove of images, both searching and viewing the collection is limited.  Her article gives a decent overview of the collections wealth and limits and her criticism of the lack of a slide show method for browsing through the collection or any segment of it is well taken.

Here I would just like to focus a bit more on the enormous limitations of the search capability.  Heffernan notes that “the home page for the archive has little charm, and the categories assigned to what are presumably the most exciting photographic subjects (“people,” “places,” 1860-1970 by decade) don’t exactly tantalize.”  She fails to note that these are not even true categories of the material.  When you enter any of them you find that fewer than 200 images retreived.   If these were true categories they would contain all of the pictures appropriate to the category.  Rather these are merely teasers, to give the user a sense of the contents.  In that respect they are not far off.  One can see the time period covered by the collection, and the categories do reflect the staple content of LIFE’s photos: people, places, events, sports, and culture.

The underlying problem is that the search function merely searches the captions associated with the photos and nothing else and, as Heffernan notes, these have obviously not been enhanced in any way by Google.   Some of the captions are pretty descriptive, as old LIFE readers like myself will recognize.  An example is the best evidence of what I mean.

The caption of the photograph above appears just as it did in the Google LIFE collection and, presumably, in LIFE when it was first published.  The Google results also show, in at least some cases, the date and the photographer.  There are also “labels” (tags) associated with an image, but there is no explanation about how these were determined.  The labels for the photo of the Prince above are: Hyderabad Royal Family, Animals, Azam Jah, Elephants, India, People And Customs, Living Standards, Taxidermy, Caste System, Vintage Print, 1940s.  These are sufficiently different from the caption to have required some additional organization.

Others photographs, however, do little more than provide the name of the person photographed.  This works well if you are looking for a celebrity, Hollywood or political, but not if you are looking for other things.  If you want to see the dress styles worn in a particular year or decade, forget it.  If you want to see male portraits, or city scenes, or generic objects like a soda can, a television,  a record album, or an elephant you may be lucky and find a few that were important enough to the editor to be identified as such in the caption, but otherwise you will be out of luck.

Elizabeth Taylor 1987 - Google's LIFE Magazine collection. No photographer credit available.

Google does appear to have an algorithm so that a search for a particular term will also look for variations on the word.  A search for “taxidermy,” for instance, retrieves a number of images with captions using some variation on “taxidermy,” like “taxidermist.”  But it didn’t retrieve the photo above which both uses the word “taxidermic,” and has a label of “taxidermy,” because, as I later realized, I couldn’t see all relevant results.

A search for “diamond” did retrieve a number of photographs of those newsworthy stones, but none of Liz Taylor decked out in hers.  I only found this one, among many others, by searching for her.  There were quite a few, but I didn’t find any with the word diamond in the caption or as a label.  Surprisingly,  my “diamond” search it also retrieved 138 photographs of Lou Diamond Phillips.  Who knew?

The most problematic aspect of search, however, isn’t the limited text or labels available to search; it is the fact that all searches return no more that 200 results.  Google doesn’t make any effort to explain this.  Since all searches retrieve only 200 photos, the same search may return different results each time you run it. It took me a while to realize that was the reason I was having such difficulty finding particular images I knew were in the collection.  Many of my searches failed simply because all results were not returned.  This is such a huge deficiency that I find it mystifying.  Could it be that this was a condition of the LIFE/Google argeement?

For a collection of this size there should be a way to obtain complete results, and to filter them so as to distinguish between the caption, labels, and the photographer.

The bottom line:  the limited results are very problematic and the search functionality is thus not  even as good as the advanced search for any images in Google.

I can’t help believe that the caption and other information that is associated with these images during the process of digital capture does not permit some additional ways to parse the text and improve search.  Is there not IPTC coding data for any of these photographs?   The first IPTC standard was approved in 1979, but there were guidelines for metadata for news images for years before that.  The weekly LIFE ceased being published in 1972, but it was published intermittently until 1978 and as a monthly from then until 2000.  There is some overlap.

How can Google make retrieval better?  Hiring experts to classify the 10,000,000 photos is not an option.  Google has create a user tagging tool, Google Image Labeler, “a feature of Google Search that allows you to label images and help improve the quality of Google’s image search results,” and this is a step in the right direction.   Like STEVE.museum, Peek-A-Boom and Artigo, this is an effort to harness the collective intelligence of users.   If Google can’t figure out how to do this effectively on a large scale, then who can?  If they succeed, I suggest that they gift this system to the museums of the world.  By the way, I’d love to know more a lot more about this endeavor.  I think this will be the subject of a future post.

In regard to areas other than search, what else would I like to see ?  For one thing, high resolution versions of these images available to scholars and academics for reprint at no cost, as the Metropolitan and other museums have done.

One final note: ironically, as I wrote this post, a segment of this same collection was made available on the site www.life.com.  The display is similar but, at least for the Prince of Berar photo, the information was more complete.  I learned that the photo was taken on Jan 01, 1946.  The credit is Margaret Bourke-White/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.  Moreover the image is linked to a Getty Images item record with a more detailed set of keywords (oh when will there be agreement on this terminology).    Interestingly,in contrast to Google’s reassuring message that the image can be used for non-commercial purposes without any special permission,  the LIFE site adds a potent threat for copyright violators.  The bottom line may be the same but the message is different.

Title:   Azam Jah
Circa 1946: Indian Prince of Berar of the Kshatryis caste, a mighty hunter & heir to the throne of Hyderabad, posing next to taxidermic specimen of the elephant he shot, in the game room of his palace. (Photo by Margaret Bourke-White/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Image #:           50873062
License type:           Rights-managed
Photographer:           Margaret Bourke-White/Stringer
Collection:           Time & Life Pictures
Source:           Time & Life Pictures
Credit:           Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Date created:           01 Jan 1946
Bar code:           00732768
Object name:           00732768.jpg
Copyright:           Time & Life Pictures
Keywords:           Hunting, Custom, Vintage, Game, Room, Lifestyles, People, Order, Lifestyles, Palace, India, Animal, Elephant, Natural Disaster, Religion, Prince, Specimen Holder, Hyderabad, Males, Portrait, Animal Themes, Taxidermy, Throne, Print, Advance, Hyderabad, Arts Culture and Entertainment, Human Interest, Prince. Find similar images
Release information:           Not released. More information
Restrictions:           Contact your local office for all commercial or promotional uses.
No resale application use without the prior permission of Time, Inc. Contact your local office to see if we can clear this image for you.
Availability:           Availability for this image cannot be guaranteed until time of purchase.

Getty Images reserves the right to pursue unauthorized users of this image or clip. If you violate our intellectual property you may be liable for: actual damages, loss of income, and profits you derive from the use of this image or clip, and, where appropriate, the costs of collection and/or statutory damages up to $150,000 (USD).

Tagged as: Elizabeth Taylor, Google, Image resolution, International Press Telecommunications Council, Lou Diamond Phillips, New York Times Company, Search Engines, The New York Times Company, Virginia Heffernan

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Here’s the good news.

There are a lot of Search Terms…

The TATE has used a relatively expansive list of subjects to organize a prominent subject search capability for all the  works in its online collection.  According to the site there are 66,062 works of art by 3,075 artists in the collection, “every work in the Collection has its own online information page,” and “the majority are illustrated, though this is not always possible due to copyright restrictions.”

Main Subject List. The Tate.

The Terms Organized Hierarchically…

The subject search option is prominently displayed on the home page of the collection along with the simple and advances search options.   In addition to a standard text search box, the subjects are presented an expandable list of 16 main categories, as shown on the left, for browsing.  There  are (by my count, which could be off) 155 second level subcategories.   Each of these subcategories is further divided into between 2 and 100 or more subcategories of its own.  There are too many for me to count all of them, and unfortunately the TATE does not choose to allow you to peruse them in alternate ways.   It is hard to estimate the total because the range is so great.  The main category Abstraction, for instance, has a total of only 10 ultimate sub-categories, whereas Architecture has 326 (ranging from Abbey to Zoo.)  Under the main category People, however, there are  1068 names in the single third level  subcategory of portraits:male. I can’t even make a guess as to the total number when these proper names are taken into account.  A conservatively estimate of general subject categories is 4,000 or so. It is evident that the Tate has created a pretty substantial subject matter breakdown. [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ICONCLASS, Tate, Taxonomy, Thesaurus of Graphic Materials

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Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Home Page

On January 5, 2009 the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science published a document titled Best Practices for Access to Images: Recommendations for Scholarly Use and Publishing. To my ears it reads far more like a thoughtful manifesto than a statement of best practices.   But perhaps these two things are just a matter of degree.

This short document was the end product of a year long process initiated by the Institute, which “brought together a small group of scholars, curators, publishers, and other stakeholders” to reflect on the difficulties faced by scholars  in obtaining access to the visual materials which are increasing essential to their work and yet soaring in price, due to a variety of factors including the “for-profit approach to digital cultural heritage,” the “fear of abuse and theft” of these works by curators, and  by often improper reliance on claims of copyright by institutional owners of unique works.

As summarized by Christine von Oertzen  in her article New Ways of Using Digital Images  Recommendations Concerning the Free Use of Visual Media for Scholarly Purposes:

The document calls upon curators and scholars to enter into a new relationship to promote mutual trust and common interests. The aim of our compact is to address the pressing challenges raised by our digital present and future. We request that curators refrain from arbitrarily restricting the public domain. We further ask our colleagues in libraries, museums, and other repositories to accommodate the needs of scholars for freely accessible, high-resolution digital images. This request concerns not only print publications, but also new forms of electronic publishing. We exhort scholars in the humanities to respect the special custodial responsibility of museums, libraries, and other image repositories. In particular, we insist that careful attention to attribution must become part of each scholar’s contribution to a relationship based on trust and mutual benefit.

She makes the key point succinctly: [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Aristotle Project, ARTstor, Copyright, cultrual heritage, Cultural heritage, Digital library, ECHO, Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, Public domain, scholarly publication, Victoria and Albert Museum

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The Fighting Temeraire by J.M.W. Turner

The Good News

The recent news that “[t]he BBC is to put every one of the 200,000 oil paintings in public ownership in the UK on the internet,” as reported on January 28, 2009 by the Guardian,  isn’t exactly about searching by subject, which is my subject, but it will lead there eventually.  It is heartening news about the right of the public to access publicly owned works and the recognition of this right by the the United Kingdom.  I should note here that this particular endeavor is only one of a number of related initiatives that the BBC has pledged will give it a “deeper commitment to arts and music,” including “opening up the Arts Council’s vast film archive online” among many others and that the article reports on these as well.

Curious, of course, about how subject matter access would be provided, and hoping for the best, I dug deeper.  I was able to glean a little more information from the BBC Press Release which prompted the article.   There I learned that the project is a partnership of the BBC with the Public Catalogue Foundation.   The BBC describes the project as follows:

“it could enable the public to view every one of the UK’s 200,000 publicly-owned oil paintings, 80% of which are currently hidden away….The aim of the partnership is to establish a website on bbc.co.uk, called Your Paintings, where the public can view and find information on every oil painting in public ownership… The benefits to the public at large and the participating public collections will be substantial.”

I wanted to know more about what “view and find information” meant specifically. [click to continue…]

Tagged as: "subject matter cataloging", Art, BBC, Bridgeman Art Library, excel, Issuu, Public Catalogue Foundation, resolution, United Kingdom, Victoria and Albert Museum

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I’ve written before about the ideal for access to heritage digital images.  In case you don’t recall I described it as follows:

Universal, scalable, trustworthy, sustainable, and permanent access to all heritage digital images from the publicly accessible to the privately held, including those from all museums and cultural institutions, archives and libraries, private collections, and publishers, using a system of organization that maximizes entry points and interconnections between objects and relevant texts, to facilitate retrieval for all imaginable purposes, through interfaces which have the capability of searching across all platforms, providing high resolution images, thumbnail browsing, copying and reuse for non-commercial purposes, and links to contextual materials, with continuously updated information of the applicability of worldwide copyright status and contact information for obtaining permissions.

While it is utopian, this ideal provides a context for looking at what exists, and what is evolving.  Having an ideal toward which we strive is critical, even if entirely impractical at present. It seems to me that the steps that are being taken now should [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Digital image, google books, searchability

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Art Slide Drawer Photo Credit: Night Owl City CC2.0

Ancient History

Prior to the development of digitization techniques and the internet, image collections, typically slides, were organized by individuals who used the slides for teaching, or by individual holding institutions, often in unique or idiosyncratic ways.  The systems for organizing these slides were relatively simple and had limited access points.  While there were common elements, there were many differences, both in the character and depth of the organization.

Recent History

Since digitization of images emerged radical changes have occurred.  Many associations involved in this areas, of professionals who handle these collections, of institutions who house them (including colleges, universities, museums, and archives), and of researchers who use them, turned their attention to the ways that digitization can be harnessed.  Individually and collectively they have developed planning procedures for large-scale conversion of analog images to digital format, systems for organizing and managing these images, websites for sharing them, and protocols for exchanging metadata.  There are a host of open source and proprietary tools supporting these many efforts.

The ability to actually retrieve and use these heritage images ultimately depends on metadata.  Andrew Wray put it well when he said that metadata is [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Image search, Library and Information Science, Metadata, Open source, slides, XML

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