200,000 Paintings in the UK Going Online but…..

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.

The Public Catalog Foundation

Turning to the site of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a registered charity that was launched in 2003, I was able to find some additonal information about the project in general and about cataloging.  “[i]t is 30% of the way through cataloguing the UK’s national collection of around 200,000 oil paintings…”  The PCF  projects that they images should be online by the end of 2010.

It should be noted that some of the images are simply on loan to the public institution where they are kept.   The  reproduction is based on a Bridgeman Art Library transparency in some of these cases.   In some cases Bridgeman administers the copyright for that artist.  In some cases both are true.

The catalogues are organized by 20 geographical areas or institutions represented as per the list below.

• CWL Cornwall
• ESX Essex
• FTZ Cambridgeshire: The Fitzwilliam Museum
• GAC Government Art Collection
• HMP Hampshire
• HRT Hertfordshire
• IWM Imperial War Museum
• KNT Kent
• LDS West Yorkshire: Leeds
• NFK Norfolk
• SFK Suffolk
• SIOW Hampshire: Southampton & the Isle of Wight
• SRY Surrey
• STF Staffordshire
• SUCL London: The Slade and UCL
• SX-E East Sussex
• SX-W West Sussex
• V&A The Victoria and Albert Museum
• YKS-N North Yorkshire
• YKS-W West Yorkshire

A  complete Artist Index (Oil Paintings in Public Ownership: Artist Index Volumes I–XX) lists the approximately 11,000 artists represented.

Cataloguing

These are the only statements about the cataloguing process that I found on the PDF site.

“Cataloguing data is collected on Excel spreadsheets from each collection and at the end of each county project loaded onto an Access database. The data and images are organised in a way that will make them easily searchable when the database goes on line.”

“Data will be collated and collected onto a central database and made available on the web through the Arts and Humanities Data Service in 2007.”

“The completed database will be open to all by the end of 2008. The website will be designed to be of use and interest to scholars and curators and the wider educational sector, to lifelong learners and the general public.”

I’m still left wondering what these statements mean specifically.

The Catalogs

The foundation has already produced 22 catalogues in print out of 90 planned.  Hard and soft cover printed copies are available for purchase online for £25 and £15 respectively on its site.   It appears that most of the catalogues have between 1,500 and 2,700 color reproductions.    Short sections of  two of the catalogues have recently been made available on the Public Catalogue Foundation site and at ISSUU, a site to “collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best.”  Based on the select display of the catalogs available online, as shown below in a double page spread,  a few images have been reproduced in full page spreads, but most are the print equivalent of thumbnails.

The sample page of the print catalog information reveals that basic information  is provided but nothing about the subject matter of the work:

• Artist name
• Painting title
• Medium and support
• Artisits date
• Execution date
• Dimensions
• Collection inventory number
• Further Information

The  visual presentation of the catalogues on these two sites are nifty, slick, and virtually identical.  The catalogue pages are arrayed in thumbnails at the bottom.  Navigation is available in several forms and there is a smooth page turning feature.  Finally,  a  zoom and drag function provide a close up view of the pages.  For those few images that are given a full page of the catalog the detail available online  is excellent, and far greater than is available in the print version (See example below).  For those relegated to small size the greatest zoom on line results in images around 200 to 300 px wide.   But of course these are simply samples to help drive sales of the catalogs.   There is no search function and, as already noted, no subject matter content available.

Online Access

What will the online access promised by the PCF and the BBC actually look like?  Would that there was any information about this; but, alas, there is none that I can find online.  From the  promises set out above the works will “be easily searchable.”  It is also promised that the “entire database” will be available to the public.   Does that mean all the information collected?    I certainly  hope so.  The question is what is being catalogued? Is it only the basic information provided in print?  Or is more detailed information being collected and available online?

I wish that this information was being shared.  Cataloging must be done at the same time the images are being preserved and saved, presumably in some sort of Digital Asset Management system.  How this is being done is surely known, although the exact interface is probably not.   Will all images be made available at the resolution one finds in the few large catalog images available now?   Or will the online presentation replicate the catalog pages already online?  Will there be subject matter cataloging? Using what system?  Will the images be tagged or placed in any subject hierarchy?   Will the interface allow for more sophisticated filtering techniques for the search? It seems a shame that one can find recipes on line in this way (see e.g. Recipezaar), but not public art work.

These are the things that I want to know, but have been unable to find out.  I also wonder whether the online presentation, in which the BBC is touting its role, is going to add qualitatively to the existing online presentation.  In other words, is the BBC doing anything to enhance the project or is it just providing funding to help complete the work that has already begun.  The latter is laudable; the former would be even better.

Providing public access requires that there be a meaningfully way to search the works.  While my brief online digging has failed to answer these questions, someone know the answers to them.  Perhaps they will share them here.  I continue to hope that this aspect of the project will be as comprehensive and visionary as the scope of the works being included.  The project is expected to be completed by 2012.

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