Imagin' - a blog

AIMS: Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship

2012-01-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

The new challenge, Born-Digital. Here is a good review of best practices for all those, think public document archives, fine art collections and historical archives, responsible fore the care and protection of such articles.

AIMS: Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship

Melissa Terras' Blog: Digitisation Studio Setup

2011-12-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Simon Tanner and Melissa Terras for this succinct but complete description of a digital studio set up. I think you will find it very helpful.

Melissa Terras' Blog: Digitisation Studio Setup

NARAtions » National Archives Digitization Tools Now on GitHub

2011-10-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

Just want to alert you to a great blog from the National Archives. This post in particular discusses some digitisation tool that they are developing and making available. Check it out: NARAtions » National Archives Digitization Tools Now on GitHub

Want to introduce a great blog and source of information.

2011-10-10T23:20:00.000-07:00

I will let them describe their Blog

HangingTogether is a place where some of the staff atOCLC Research, particularly those of us who support the OCLC Research Library Partnership, can talk about the intersections we see happening between these different types of institutions. We visit partners, go to conferences, and take note of the interesting things we see along the way. Stop in, stay awhile, and hang out.

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. Benjamin Franklin

Check it out
hangingtogether.org

Saving the Smithsonian’s Web

2011-08-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Saving the Smithsonian’s Web

Detailed description of how the Smithsonian is archiving its web material, especially interesting in what they are preserving.

The Signal: Digital Preservation

2011-08-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

The Signal: Digital Preservation

The Library of Congress has announced a cool new open-source web application called Recollection that allows easy creation of new interfaces for looking at cultural heritage collections in new and exciting ways. Check it out!

BPOC Express: Shared Digital Asset Management in a private cloud in under 6 months | Balboa Park

2011-08-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

BPOC Express: Shared Digital Asset Management in a private cloud in under 6 months.

Check out the great work Balboa Park in San Diego has done in developing a collaborative DAM in this write up which they did.

BPOC Express: Shared Digital Asset Management in a private cloud in under 6 months | Balboa Park:
Overview

‪Preserving One Copy of Every Book Ever Published‬‏ - YouTube

2011-08-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Check out this news article on Brewster Kahle. Not only is he a cool dude there are great pictures of the book scanner.

‪Preserving One Copy of Every Book Ever Published‬‏ - YouTube

More Managing that Metadata

2011-07-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

Many have talked about embedding data in the digital file for some time. TIFF actually stands for Tagged Image File Format. Many pieces of hardware already use that capability to embed data in the file for other hardware to use to interpret the file's visual data. Now people can also do so, with almost as much ease. Two groups continue to work on this the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) and the VRA (Visual Reource Association).

The VRA's embedded Metadata Working Group has created a VRA metadata panel for Adobe's products, which uses the VRA core metadata structure, a similar though more complex than Dublin Core structure.

The IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group has issued a Manifesto encouraging this effort in May 2011.

Photographers, film makers, videographers, illustrators, publishers, advertisers, designers, art directors, picture editors, librarians and curators all share the same problem: struggling to track rapidly expanding collections of digital media assets such as photos and video/film clips.

With that in mind we propose five guiding principles as our "Embedded Metadata Manifesto":
    1.    Metadata is essential to describe, identify and track digital media and should be applied to all media items which are exchanged as files or by other means such as data streams.
    2.    Media file formats should provide the means to embed metadata in ways that can be read and handled by different software systems.
    3.    Metadata fields, their semantics (including labels on the user interface) and values, should not be changed across metadata formats.
    4.    Copyright management information metadata must never be removed from the files.
    5.    Other metadata should only be removed from files by agreement with their copyright holders.

Check out these two sites to learn more.

Image Metadata announcements

2011-05-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

Image Metadata Handbook
Brand new: the CEPIC/IPTC Image Metadata Handbook with comprehensive
guidelines for metadata management.

Contents:
Start_Introduction.pdf
Acrobat_Settings.pdf
Core_Fields.pdf
Extension_Fields.pdf
Guide_Book.pdf
Interactive_Table.pdf
Legal_Document.pdf

http://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/documentation/CEPIC-IPTC-ImageMetadata
Handbook_1.zip

Also see

Embedded Metadata Manifesto (2011)

How metadata should be embedded and preserved in digital media files
The Manifesto was issued by the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group in May
2011

Photographers, film makers, videographers, illustrators, publishers,
advertisers, designers, art directors, picture editors, librarians and
curators all share the same problem: struggling to track rapidly expanding
collections of digital media assets such as photos and video/film clips.

More at

http://www.iptc.org/site/Photo_Metadata/Embedded_Metadata_Manifesto_(2011)

Thanks to
Alan Newman
National Gallery of Art
for this information

A DAM great list of Sources

2011-04-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

The Museum Computer Network has been having an interesting discussion on Digital Asset Management systems. Among the information posted was some from, Leala Abbott, who has a blog on just this topic and is permitting me to post her suggested list of "great resources" here:

DAM Foundation (LinkedIn): http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1952873

a cross-disciplinary, professional organization, devoted to standardizing and making sense of the world of DAM which would be useful to join and follow. I recently created the DAM List (links below) which is a community contributed list of technical specs on DAM products (which are actually tough to get without jumping through vendor hoops).

The Real Story Group (leading content technology analyst group): http://www.realstorygroup.com/
Digital Asset Management (industry Blog): http://digitalassetmanagement.org.uk/
Createasphere (DAM Conference Series): http://createasphere.com/En/explore-expos-conferences.html
Henry Stewart - Digital Asset Management Conference Series: http://www.hsconferences.com/dam.aspx
Early and Associates: http://www.earley.com/
AIIM: http://www.aiim.org/
The DAM List (Product Tech Specs): http://lealaabbott.com/wp/archives/423

If you like those check out Leala at her blog Lealaabbott.com

New Digital Preservation Tools

2011-04-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

A new free and open source package of digital preservation tools is being developed. It is called Archivematica and is a product of many collaborators. It brings together several digital preservation tools that would normally be used separately such as JHOVE and DROID and puts them into a workflow system.

Their description of their process is in itself interesting and while it is still in beta form, it is worth the wander to go and peruse what they say and plan for:

http://archivematica.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Copyright , the Digital Library, and More

2011-04-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

On March 22, 2011, Google’s ambitious plan to create a universal digital library consisting of every book ever published was derailed when Judge Denny Chin of the US Second District Court in Manhattan rejected the Amended Settlement Agreement which had been hammered out with groups representing authors and publishers. This project which is widely supported within Google is integral to their corporate mission that includes a charge to organize all of the world’s information. Judge Chin citing antitrust, copyright, and other concerns ruled that the settlement was too broad and essentially granted Google a monopoly.

On March 23, 2011, Robert Darnton published an opinion article in the New York Times calling for “a Digital Library Better Than Google’s”—a noncommercial digital public library. Subsequently, on April 3, 2011, the New York Times published an article that discusses the ruling, the ruling’s implications for creating a digital public library, and plans achieving that goal. Whether the Google project will eventually succeed or whether it will be superseded by a noncommercial digital public library such as the proposed Digital Public Library of America, or whether another solution will emerge remains to be seen.

This recent development reminds me of the ongoing copyright and ownership issues pertaining to digital images. These thorny issues swirl around the right to publish and to use digital images in untold ways including in education and as the basis for the creation of new works. We are fortunate to have access to many useful and reputable sites to help navigate these concerns. A particularly useful and interesting site which includes historical as well as current links has been newly updated by Christine L. Sundt. You might want to check it out.

A New Image Site - Ookaboo

2011-03-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

Recently I was contacted by a Paul Houle about some broken links on the site Dig-mar.com which I maintain. I guess I might as well announce here that that site is no longer being maintained and will be closed completely this summer. I am focusing my energies on this blog and the Imageminders.net site of the ICCoop.. However, I am grateful to Paul for his reminder and would like to pass on the resource which he was attempting to post on that site. Ookaboo

His group Ontology2, has created the Ookaboo website, which contains digital images that they claim are either in the public domain and or under Creative Commons licensing terms. It appears to be a collection of harvested images from the web, in particular Wikimedia, where people place images that they wish to share with the world, so the free access is probably correct.
The interesting part to me, and I think to many of you, is how they are indexing the images , which is by means of the semantic web.
Here is their description of what that means.

Images on Ookaboo are indexed by terms from the semantic web, the web of linked data. Although you're free to find images through the human interface, automated systems can quickly find and use images through the semantic API.
Ookaboo has two goals: (i) to dramatically improve the state of the art in image search for both humans and machines, and (ii) to construct a knowledge base about the world that people live in that can be used to help information systems better understand us.

Semantic Web, Linked Data
In the semantic web, we replace the imprecise words that we use everyday with precise terms defined by URLs. This is linked data because it creates a universal shared vocabulary.
For an example, in conventional image search, a person might use the word "jaguar" to search for
    •    the animal
    •    the automobile brand
    •    the Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL team)
    •    the game console from Atari
    •    ... and nearly 30 other things that are listed in Wikipedia.
Note in the cases above, there are pages in Wikipedia about each of the topics above: it's reasonable, therefore, that we could use these URLs as a shared vocabulary for referring to these things. However, we get some benefits when we use URLs that are linked to machine-readable pages, such as http://dbpedia.org/resource/Jaguar, or  http://rdf.freebase.com/rdf/biology.itis.180593

Pages on Ookaboo are marked up with RDFa, a standard that lets semantic web tools extract machine readable information from the same pages that people view.

Named entities
Ookaboo is oriented around named entities, particularly 'concrete' things such as places, people and creative works. With current technology, it's more practical to create a taxonomy of things like "Manhattan", "Isaac Asimov" and "The Catcher In the Rye" than it is to tackle topics like "eating", "digestion" and "love". We believe that a comprehensive exploration of named entities will open pathways to an understanding of other terms, and hope to extend Ookaboo's capabilities as technology advances.

The above information is from their About us page, which I highly recommend you check out.

Oh and yes their images are pretty good too, especially for those interested in buildings. and other "concrete" things.

The Ends and the Beginnings

2011-02-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

The passing of Kodachrome film (1935-2011) definitively marks the end of an era. The news late in December, 2010, that Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons Kansas would soon process the final 35mm roll of Kodak’s Kodachrome film was both expected and poignant. Kodachrome was for many years the film of choice for professionals and amateurs alike; the collections of countless academic slide libraries were filled with Kodachrome slides acquired from professional image vendors and amateur photographers including institutional faculty, students, and alumni. Generations of college students were first exposed to major works of art and architecture when looking at Kodachrome slides projected in their Art History classes.

The first academic lantern slide collections in the United States date from the 1880’s. Seventy years later by the 1950’s, the newer 35mm film format (including Kodak’s Kodachrome) was being quickly adopted by younger faculty members while the older generation mourned the loss of the larger format. For almost fifty years technology changed quite slowly for academic image collections. Then in 2004 two significant events occurred: 1) the Andrew Mellon Foundation announced that the ARTstor image database was available for licensing by nonprofit institutions and 2) Kodak discontinued the manufacturing of its 35mm carousel projectors and carousels. As a consequence American academics—again, particularly the younger faculty—realized the urgent need to switch from the use of analog, film based slides to digital images in their teaching. Of course, slide libraries are themselves now an endangered species. Many have been shuttered or eliminated; most are no longer actively used or maintained. Licensed content along with locally produced and maintained institutional digital image repositories have taken their place; Internet resources including Flickr, Wikipedia, and Google Images as well as personally scanned or digitally photographed images are often the resource of choice for imagery used in the humanities. Digital images are downloaded and stored on computers and iPods; they are incorporated into PowerPoint presentations; they are posted on course management sites such as BlackBoard; they can be manipulated and shared at will.

Shortly after the news about the demise of Kodachrome film, came Google’s announcement about their newest foray into the world of images. The Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/) is a collaborative effort between Google and a number of prestigious art museums to make high resolution digital images of important and popular works of art globally available using broad array of Google technologies. The ability to zoom into and out of the images, to walk through the galleries where they are housed, to hear or read a description of each work, to be transported to the birth location of the artist, and to share them with friends and colleagues is unprecedented. Information about this project is even available via YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/googleartproject) making it yet easier to access and use this technology. While this project currently only contains 1,000 of the most iconic images from seventeen museums, it will certainly quickly grow in all dimensions.

So, out with the old and in with the new. Kodachrome film lasted forty six years. Will ARTstor or the Google Art Project be viable for as long? What is the next innovation in store for this generation of academics, when will it come, and what are the implications?

California Grant Opportunites

2011-02-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

We want to make California special librarians aware of a competitive grant opportunity for all California libraries with special collections, including public, academic and ones in museums. It is named the Local History Digital Resources Project (LHDRP) and makes it easy to get a library’s cultural heritage materials online.

If your library is awarded this LSTA grant, it will receive funding to scan 200 items, as well as free training on copyright, metadata, and CONTENTdm. Your images will have great visibility when made freely available on the Online Archive of California and Calisphere. And your community will value the service they provide in collecting and preserving its history!

Share your collections and build support with LHDRP

The LHDRP application process is short and painless. Just tell us what you want to digitize and its relevance to California history.

The application materials for LHDRP 2011-12 is available on the CSL LSTA application page: http://www.library.ca.gov/grants/lsta/apply.html

The due date is April 1st

You may find a flyer here http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/projects/docs/lhdrp_flier_2011_FINAL.pdf , which we hope you will share with all who might be interested.

Thank you for your time and assistance in promoting this grant.

Embedded Metadata News

2011-01-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

Fresh from the Visual Resource Association's (VRA) email list is this post from Greg Reser, which he has given me permission to repost here. Anyone with a Flickr account should check it out.

Embedded Metadata News

Like all of you, I spent my Holiday break reading about metadata, especially embedded metadata. One blog post I found was from a Flickr developer in response to a complaint the social media companies "own" and "lock-in" their user's content. The developer responded by saying that Flickr allows full access to all of the content users upload and create, including Descriptions and Tags, http://laughingmeme.org/2010/05/18/minimal-competence-data-access-data-ownership-and-sharecropping/ . This is good news because it means that all that work you did tagging your photos is not limited to your Flickr page, you can download it to your computer or share it with other social media sites. You enter the data once and then reuse it over and over.

Unfortunately, this data access comes via the Flickr API, meaning you have to be a programmer to get at it. The good news is that some developers have created free or low cost applications to backup your Flickr content. Best of all, they all have the cute missing "e" in their name. For those of you have been looking for a way to get your metadata out of Flickr, you might try one of these apps. The only limit I have found is that these apps do not export any custom metadata that was originally uploaded to Flickr. So, if used a custom tool like the VRA Photoshop panel to add VRA metadata, it won't be downloaded. It is possible to do this, just not with these apps.

Flickr Edit (Windows) - FREE (upload/download photos and EXIF and IPTC metadata metadata) http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/72157602367520002/

Downloadr (Windows) - FREE (download photos and metadata EXIF and IPTC metadata) http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/12400/

Bulkr (Windows, Mac) - FREE for basic (download photos), $24.95 for pro (download photos and metadata EXIF and IPTC metadata. Also exports .txt file of metadata!) http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/72157622874451890/

You can find lots of other useful Flickr apps on the Flickr App Garden - http://www.flickr.com/services/

Besides retrieving metadata for your own photos, this ability could also be put to use for collecting images and metadata from groups. For instance, you could have faculty and students upload and tag their own photos in Flickr, say of field work they did documenting architecture, and then you could download them and parse out the metadata into your institutional database.

Greg Reser

Arts Library

University of California, San Diego

greser@ucsd.edu

Flatbeds VS Digital CopyStands

2010-12-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

There has been a very interesting discussion on the Visual Resources Association (VRA) list serve comparing scanning stations that are flatbed scanners and those are copystands with a digital camera. The digital copy stand seems to be the favorite among those with extensive workflows because of its consistency and speed. However, when you are scanning printed material which has been printed using a dot pattern such as most books, brochures and programs, people seem to lean towards the flatbed. The problem with dot patterns and half tones is moire patterning which is defined at wikipedia.org.as "moiré pattern (pronounced /mwaˈreɪ/ in English, [mwaʁe] in French) is an interference pattern created, for example, when two grids are overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes." Thus, you have pixels and you have dots of ink, which results in moire or ripples across your scan.
Many find a flatbed scanner, which was described by a digital copyststand advocate as a digital camera with a very shallow depth of field, the preferred method with this type of material, because most scanning software have a descreening function. For those curious, at this time the Epson 10000XL appears to be the flatbed of choice.
However, if you are using the copystand with digital camera set up, some "tricks" of the trade were shared. The basic one appears to be to rotate the original material, shoot it and then straighten it in Photoshop. The rotation is minimum, about 8 degrees and should be done by trial and error as different printers have different dot patterns.
Another trick offered by the generous VRA listees was to correct bleed-through from the backing page, by using a sheet of matte black paper can help prevent this, and sometimes help minimize background “checkerboard.”

My thanks to the VRA List, in particular: Rebecca A. Moss, Howard Brainen, Eileen Fry, Mark Olson, Chris Strasbaugh and Ross Wolcott.
For those looking for more information about scanning stations, you can look at Califa's Digital Information Forum where I have placed several scanning articles and images of scanning stations.

University of Chicago to use Finding Aid for large scale Digitization Initiative

2010-11-12T14:07:00.000-08:00

Kathleen E. Arthur, Head of Digitization at the Preservation Department of the University of Chicago Library recently announced their launch of a digitization initiative on the Digipres listserv. What I found particularly interesting is their use of finding aids, but these are not your mother's finding aids. As you can see by reading her post below, their use allows them to catalog at various levels of detail, through the use of EAD tags links placed at various places in the finding aid.

But Kathleen describes the whole project so much better, Read it for yourself.

11/11/10 to Digipres from Katheen Arthur:

The University of Chicago Library’s Special Collections Research Center has a launched an initiative for the digitization of archives and manuscript collections. The digital images are being made available via the online finding aid for each collection. This will recreate for the online user the experience of a researcher encountering the original materials in the SCRC Reading Room, with documents displayed as they are housed in each folder, and with description of the contents in the form of folder headings.

Individual, high-resolution images of each page will be permanently preserved in the Library's digital repository, and can be made available for publication or other research needs. Due to provisions of copyright laws, digitization efforts are currently focused on materials in the public domain, or those for which the University of Chicago holds copyright.

Collections with digitized content now available online include:

The Ida B. Wells Papers contain diaries, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs documenting the life of the teacher, journalist, and anti-lynching activist.   http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.IBWELLS
The Dr. Harry Bakwin and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin Soviet Posters Collection contains nineteen Soviet political posters produced in the early 1930s, collected by the American physicians Dr. Harry Bakwin and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin during two trips to the Soviet Union. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.BAKWINPOSTERS
The Fielding Lewis Papers contain business, personal and legal records documenting life on a plantation on the James River in Virginia, both before and after the Civil War. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.LEWISF
The University of Chicago Laboratory School Work Reports are made up of reports about the Elementary and Secondary division of the Laboratory School, and document classroom activities in the School's first decade. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.LABSCHOOLREPORT
The Jefferson Davis Trial Papers document the legal entanglements, ambiguous delays, political floundering, and shifting of responsibilities surrounding Jefferson Davis' first indictment for treason.   http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.MS979JDavis
The Thomas Winston Papers relate primarily to Winston's activities as a surgeon with Illinois troops during the Civil War.   http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.WINSTONT
The Middle Eastern Poster Collection produced by government offices and private organizations, primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/scrc/ead/ICU.SPCL.MEPOSTERS

For those of you who are interested in the production details, the Large Scale Digitization Initiative is a collaborative effort involving the Special Collections Research, the Preservation Department, and the Digital Library Development Center. The initiative has been guided by definitions of, and requirements for, mass digitization provided by funding agencies such as the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. These guidelines stress expedited scanning workflows, without sacrifice of image quality, and with close attention to preservation concerns, and the use of existing descriptive metadata, such as that provided by a finding aid.

The collections are scanned by Preservation staff. The documents are scanned in color, in the order in which they are filed in each folder, and a .TIFF file is created for each page image. A naming scheme is used for the files which can be extended to other collections scanned as part of the initiative. The TIFF images from each folder in the physical collection are combined into PDFs for delivery. PDF was chosen as a delivery format because of its simplicity, stability and ubiquity. It is expected that the vast majority of users will have PDF viewers on their computers, and will be able to use them to enlarge, decrease, rotate, print, and otherwise easily view the images. Although the images are delivered as pdfs, the tifs of each page will be stored in the digital repository, and will be available if needed for other purposes.

Links to the digital files are added to the online finding aid by SCRC staff. The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) tags chosen allow links to be created at any level of description in the finding aid, from series, to folder, to item, and for multiple links to be attached to a particular description. DLDC staff updated the style sheets to allow display of the links in the finding aids database. DLDC is also hosting the digital files, which will be retained in and delivered from the digital repository.

The procedures developed for large scale digitization of archives and manuscript collections are simple and extensible. Future plans call for the delivery of digital audio files and, eventually, of born-digital content, and for full-text searching of digitized typescript documents, which can be made keyword searchable through optical character recognition (OCR).

Large Scale Digitization Team include: Eileen A. Ielmini, Kathleen Feeney, Daniel Meyer, Kathy Arthur, Karen Dirr, Charles Blair, and the student scanners in Preservation.

Did you catch the FADGI?

2010-10-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

A new alphabet soup for you FADGI - Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative is a great resource for the latest in digital guidelines. Check it out at http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/

What is an Image?

2010-09-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

It has been almost six months since a group of visual image information professionals launched the Image Consulting Cooperative (http://sites.google.com/site/iminteg/) and inaugurated Imagin’ – a blog (http://imagin-ablog.blogspot.com/). During this time I have frequently reflected about such issues as what is an image, how are images used, are images different in the digital rather than analog format, and why do we care? What’s so important about assisting others in the use and creation of images, visual information, and associated tools? Why is the work of the Image Consulting Cooperative important?

Images have been around for a very long time. We have all encountered Pliny the Elder’s tale from Naturalis Historia of the contest between the ancient painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius to determine which of the two was the greater artist. Zeuxis revealed his painting of grapes which were so realistic that the birds flew down to peck at the fruit. Zeuxis then asked Parrhasius to pull back the curtain to reveal his painting only to discover that the curtain was the painting. Where upon Zeuxis is reported to have said, ‘I have deceived the birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis.’

The online Oxford English Dictionary (Draft revision, June 2010; accessed, September 7, 2010) provides us with eleven definitions and many variants of the word “image” including:

· An artificial imitation or representation of something, esp. of a person or the bust of a person

· The aspect, appearance, or form of someone or something; semblance, likeness.

· A visual representation or counterpart of an object or scene, formed through the interaction of rays of light with a mirror, lens, etc., usually by reflection or refraction.

· A thing or (now esp.) person in which the aspect, form, or character of another is reproduced; an exact likeness; a counterpart, copy.

· A mental representation of something (esp. a visible object) created not by direct perception but by memory or imagination; a mental picture or impression; an idea, conception.

· A representation of something to the mind by speech or writing; a vivid or graphic description.

· With of. A thing that stands for or is taken to stand for something else; a symbol, emblem.

· Computing. An exact copy of an entire disk or (less commonly) a file or set of files, usually made for the purposes of backing up data.

W. J. T. Mitchell in his article in the New Literary History, “What is an Image,” (Mitchell 1984, 503-537) constructs a family tree by depicting primary meanings of the word “images” as branches representing different conceptual types--graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal. Each branch is representative of the type of imagery that informs the discourse of an intellectual discipline. Traditionally, visual resources professionals have concentrated on aspects of graphic or optical images and imagery; they have been specifically involved with the visual surrogate—the photograph of the painting by Zeuxis of grapes. The patrons that we serve, on the other hand, are interested in the image itself—the painting by Zeuxis.

Of course, these typologies are both fluid and change over time. The image of the work becomes a work. The image is the work. Julie F. Codell’s new article, “Second Hand Images: On Art’s Surrogate Means and Media” published in the latest issue of Visual Resources (Codell 2010, 214-225) examines the role of reproductions in the experience and understanding of art. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is currently exhibiting, “The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture 1839 to Today” which illustratess how the photographic image of a sculpture is essential to understanding it and how the sculpture becomes the subject of the photograph. A photographic image may be critical as documentation; however, it does much, much more.

It is this fluidity of definition, function, and purpose particularly during our current period of rapid technological change from the traditional analog to digital formats that makes working with all aspects of images and imaging most compelling.

Metadata for Digital Content (MDC), Developing institution-wide policies and standards at the Library of Congress

2010-09-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

Metadata for Digital Content (MDC), Developing institution-wide policies and standards at the Library of Congress
From the site
Metadata for Digital Content (MDC)
Developing institution-wide policies and standards at the Library of Congress

Over the years the Library of Congress' digital projects have generated many digital objects and these objects have been given various levels and types of descriptive metadata. The Library has assembled several use cases that require a more coordinated and standardized approach to the creation and management of this descriptive metadata. A few examples of use cases are:

* Geographic navigation of Library of Congress digital content
* Temporal navigation of Library of Congress digital content
* Exchange video and audio data with external services

Metadata of varying degrees of richness is necessary to support the use cases.

As part of this effort an institution-wide working group was established and is making the following available for use by any interested institutions:

* A master metadata element list with recommendations on best practices for populating the elements to provide more consistency of new metadata creation throughout the institution, support the Library of Congress metadata use cases, and point to areas where metadata remediation of current metadata might be beneficial.

Check it out

Impressionism - Museums and some education resources

2010-08-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

The de Young Museum in San Francisco is presenting two consecutive special exhibitions from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The first exhibition, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, debuts at the de Young on May 22 and runs through September 6, 2010.

The Legion of Honor is presenting a special exhibition that provides context and heightens the understanding of Birth of Impressionism. Impressionist Paris: City of Light includes over 150 prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, and illustrated books from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and several private collectors. As a printmaker I found this exhibition to be deeply engaging.

While researching websites for this list I discover that the Philadelphia Museum is presenting Late Renoir through September 6, 2010 too.

Here are a selection of online resources with a focus on museums and education materials for teachers

French museums

Musee d’Orsay

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

Musee Marmottan Monet

http://www.marmottan.com/

Musee de l’Orangerie

http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/

Fondation Claude Monet/Giverny

http://www.fondation-monet.fr/uk/

US museums and educational resources

Art Institute of Chicago

http://www.artic.edu/aic/

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (ArtAccess)

http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Impressionist/index.html

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (Art Explorer)

http://www.artic.edu/artexplorer/index.php

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

http://www.metmuseum.org/

Impressionism: Art and Modernity (online resource)

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

http://www.mfa.org/index.asp

Revolution of Impressionism (online gallery)

http://educators.mfa.org/galleries/detail/10

National Gallery of Art, Washington

http://www.nga.gov/

Picturing France (lesson plan)

http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/france/picturing_france.pdf

Philadelphia Museum of Art

http://www.philamuseum.org/

Renoir Landscapes (teacher resource materials)

http://www.philamuseum.org/booklets/2_8_19_1.html

Phillips Collection

http://www.phillipscollection.org/

Luncheon of the Boating Party (teaching kit)

http://www.phillipscollection.org/education/teaching_kits/luncheon.aspx

Barnes Foundation

http://www.barnesfoundation.org/

Expansive Impressionist collection, limited images on website

de Young: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

http://deyoung.famsf.org/

Impressionism: Painting Collected by European Museums

A resource packet for educators by The Hight Museum of Art, The Seattle Art Museum, and The Denver Art Museum

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:l0lVV_VbIp8J:www.seattleartmuseum.org/Learn/SchoolTeacher/pdf/teacherlessonpdf/Impressionism.pdf+impressionist+museums&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjd7MtdJDib46x3p64JtjUY2sj-hGBmLR886ihtXUBz64mHjKmeN0cGqELKwb9JSIjcvqjp0wkS_IiUTrWpr6UVRKobbd3sb33W2tdOvqpsKC9LRYUtKYfv4nTS2qZf8v8Ofpg4&sig=AHIEtbQcd-3H-tcDph_pAdLO5fjwaJnesQ

No More Outsourcing: Digitization Now

2010-08-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

No More Outsourcing: Digitization Now Check out this blog for some interesting information, especially about how to create digital books from PDF files ( posted 7/29/10)

ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards

2010-08-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

A very interesting ongoing discussion

CONVERTING TIFF TO PDF

2010-08-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

For those looking to adopt the Acrobat file type pdf PDF as their Archival or Display file type Andrew Stawowczyk Long of the National Library of Australia has recently posted the following to Imaglib listserve.

"I wrote a free image to PDF batch converter. It's a simple application but does what's intended. Have a look at http://home.netspeed.com.au

Just a word of caution - I didn't have time to test it extensively but it seems to be working quite well."

Regards
Andrew Stawowczyk Long
Strategist
Digital Preservation Standards
National Library of Australia
anlong@nla.gov.aua

He graciously gave me permission to repost it here as he would welcome feedback, including any further development one might wish for.

The use of PDF as a preservation file type (Archival) is still abit controversial, but many including Archive.org and some of the LOC's efforts are using it. It is great for Text work.

Pre-Raphaelite websites

2010-07-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

I have switched gears... I would rather spend my time exploring image websites than writing grants.

I was recently asked to research websites for Pre-Raphaelite paintings. The Birmingham Museum site is particularly rich, allowing viewers to create on-line studies based on the collections.

Here are some great resources for this topic:

MUSEUMS

Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery

http://www.preraphaelites.org/

2257 images, plus resource guides

Tate

http://www.tate.org.uk/

399 images

Victoria and Albert

http://www.vam.ac.uk/

246 images

Manchester Art Gallery

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/

9 works

National Museums Liverpool

Lady Lever Art Gallery, Walker Art Gallery, Sudley House

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/pre-raphaelites/

17 works

Delaware Museum of Art

http://www.delart.org/collections/preraph/

78 images

RELATED RESOURCES

Pre-Raphaelite Society

http://www.pre-raphaelitesociety.org

William Morris Society

http://www.morrissociety.org

Rossetti Archive

http://www.rossettiarchive.org

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood

Victorian web

http://www.victorianweb.org

Creative Commons 101

2010-07-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

Recently I pointed out to a faculty member who wanted to post her digital images where others could have open access to them that there was something called the Creative Commons. Then yesterday I saw this link to an article on ALA TechSource, July 20, by Cindi Trainor. It is a very useful, concise overview of CC licensing. It appears that there is a new type of CC license called CC:Zero (CC:0), which differs from public domain. "Works created and declared to have a CC:Zero license may be used by anyone, in any way, and do not even require attribution of the creator."

This type of licensing, along with CC's other categories of licensing, is an attractive way for those with personal collections of digital images to dissiminate them according to their wants and wims. This site offers a useful way to tell those with whom we are consulting about image licensing in general.

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2010/07/take-pictures-tell-stories-creative-commons-and-you.html

Image Revolutions

2010-07-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

My first study trip to Europe in 1979 was what drove my decision to shoot 35mm slides rather than print film. As an ancient history major on a Classical civilizations tour, I wanted to be able to project the images to groups of people and easily make multiple slide or print copies of my shots. Thirty-five millimeter cameras with their many film choices were the most versatile option for such collaborative activities. I had the coolest technology with a camera that was easy to tote and the end product--a small, high quality, portable image I could easily share.

Time warp, circa 30 years later, I can shoot an image with my cell phone and send it on to multiple people in a matter of seconds. A wide selection of digital cameras are available--no film necessary--for every level of photographer from amateur to professional. Electronic copies of images are shared/stored on computers or prints are easily made at home or processed commercially. Digital technology has revolutionized photography and I’m thrilled to be a part of this transitional moment.

I was about 20 years too late to be part of the change from earlier forms of photography to 35mm slides. But, more and more, I find myself wondering about the similarities and the differences between these two image revolutions. Especially, the issues associated with teaching and sharing images.

Digital technology and social networks are providing unprecedented opportunities to collaborate on building image collections, but ironically, there seems to be a trend in academia of instructors building individual digital image collections that are shared in the classroom, but rarely further. Not to mention all the individual messes we are all quite capable of making with our digital files.

Is this the way it was when 35mm slides made it possible for everyone to easily shoot their own teaching images?

At what point did instructors start to realize that building a slide library everyone could use would be more efficient?

One case has come to my attention that sheds some light, but I’m sure there are more. At the University of California in Santa Barbara, the visual resources curators decided they wanted to add some historic African art material photographed in the 1960s and 1970s to the UC Shared Images project (see http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/ucsi/). When researching the copyright issues, they discovered that the faculty member who had donated these slides was not the only photographer they needed to contact for permission to digitize and share the images. It turned out that a handful of art historians who were working on African art 45 or so years ago made duplicate copies of their travel slides and shared them with the group since they couldn’t all get to some of these exotic locales.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to collect other such stories to see if the transitional moment to 35mm slides might shed light on the digital image revolution?

The abandonment of the handy 2 x 2 inch analog object of our affection is still underway. Some were starting to move to digital images only 5 years after my student travels in the 1980s, but it is also true that there are instructors still using 35mm slides for teaching in 2010. The 50-year run of slides as the dominant image format is something worth consideration. As Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Maybe we can learn something interesting to guide us through this and inevitable future transitions?

JPEG2000 here to stay?

2010-06-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

For all those studying and debating the pros and cons of the file format JPEG2000, here is an announcement of a blog dedicated to just those issues.
"The Wellcome Library has launched a new blog dedicated to JPEG 2000. The blog charts our progress in determining what type of JPEG 2000 we will use, how we use it, and how it impacts on the rest of the Digital Library infrastructure. The blog is also fed to our new Twitter account, Wellcome Digital, where you can also keep abreast of our news and views on UK PubMed Central and the development of our Digital Library and digitisation programme."

http://jpeg2000wellcomelibrary.blogspot.com/

Get informed!

A metadata renaissance

2010-06-20T04:06:00.000-07:00

In her paper “Time Horizon 2020: Library Renaissance,” Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost and Dean, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, speculates how the next decade will mark the renaissance of technical services and a complete transformation of collection development. Several of her projected changes would seem to apply to the future of visual resource collections as well.

In particular, these two points struck me:

“The emphasis of technical services will change from the acquisition of content to the user’s discovery of content. A library’s success will be defined by whether its users are finding the best materials easily and quickly, rather than by collection metrics…The success of these services will be dependent upon the availability and quality of metadata.”

“The need for all content to have some online manifestation, whether a full-text scan or a metadata record, will force all of a library’s hidden collections into the light, including manuscripts, images and other special collections.”

Metadata associated with images – in the form of shared, structured standards – has always been important to visual resources managers and librarians who sought to make their collections findable and discoverable to an audience. Just think of the on-going efforts of the VRA and other professional organizations to develop standards, schema and crosswalks for image metadata, or the amount of discussion on our listservs devoted to these issues. But today you can hardly talk about digital libraries, data repositories and Web 2.0 without the mention of metadata.

The acknowledgment that metadata is an essential element in the information infrastructure is rewarding. Metadata is ubiquitous, in the sciences, medicine, economics, education, industry, and government, as well as the arts -- in all disciplines which comprise our world today.

In the coming years, the fundamental “what” of technical services and library and visual collections will not change. However, we must be ready for the radical transformation in the “how” and “why” of these activities. Susan Gibbons believes that “the focus will shift from disparate silos of information resources to a mandated expectation that those silos can communicate and interact in ways that meet the expectations of library users.”

It is nice that as visual resources professionals, we are the established experts in developing demonstrable useful information standards for images, and that we have the skills and experience in place to leverage our knowledge with other disciplines, organizations and industries which are increasingly relying on quality metadata.

See “Time Horizon 2020: Library Renaissance”, by Susan Gibbons:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/confevents/upcoming/ala/library_renaissance.pdf

How to Quantify unauthorized use

2010-06-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

There have been some interesting posts on the Museum Computer Network list serve regarding a recent report from the GAO to Congressional Committees entitled

"INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods"
Here is a working URL: http://tinyurl.com/piracyreport

Jeff Sedlik, photographer, points out that without being able to quantify the amount of content piracy, which the report indicates is not possible, it is hard to estimate the economic effect. He then goes on to describe how an Image Recognition technology does seem to be able to quantify the use without attribution or permission of still images.

"I can't speak to piracy in other content arenas, but with respect to photography, advances in technology now allow image piracy rates on the internet to be quantified to an extent sufficient to estimate piracy rates with some accuracy. Image recognition technology may be used to locate instances of known images on web sites, and license data may then be used to determine whether or not each instance is authorized. Not all sites can be sampled, nor can all every instance of every image be identified, but it is possible to quantify estimated piracy rates via representative sampling.

In 2003, PicScout http://www.picscout.com/ (an Israeli image recognition company) searched commercial web sites for instances of images of known ownership. Nine out of every ten published images were found to be used without permission or knowledge of the rights holders.

In 2005, PicScout used a new reference group of 20,000 sample images (on this occasion, provided by a group of stock photographers), and found that 1 out of every 17 copies of these images published on commercial web sites was published without the knowledge or permission of the rights holder. In the USA, the rate of misuse found in this survey was 64%. In Germany, 23%. In the UK, 13%.

PicScout reports that over a seven year period, it found that 85% of images found on commercial websites were published without the knowledge or permission of the rights holders.

In a recent LA Times article (Sept 9, 2009), Gettyimages reported that it identifies approximately 42,000 examples of copyright infringement per year, while Corbis reported the identification of approximately 70,000 infringements each year. Importantly, these figures represent only the infringements that have been detected. It is reasonable to assume that these figures represent a small fraction of actual unauthorized usages.

I am not writing to encourage or suggest heightened enforcement or penalties for piracy, nor am I expressing an opinion on copyright law, website spidering or digital rights management. I am merely pointing out that the report in question does not indicate that piracy rates are lower than estimated by industry, and that in the photography content industry, technology now allows some quantification of piracy rates. Perfect. I would not disagree with an opinion that the content industry has used piracy statistics in lobbying for support from legislators. But any attempt to claim that the figures are overstated will be frustrated by the very same issue identified in the report -- such claims cannot be quantified."

Jeff Sedlick
Check out the GAO report for yourself. - http://tinyurl.com/piracyreport

Digital Curation

2010-05-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

A new term has been buzzing around library literature for the past few years: digital curation. Traditionally, curation was the act of organizing and maintaining a collection of artworks or artifacts. Digital curation, broadly interpreted, is about maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use. It is the active management and appraisal of digital information over its entire life cycle. Digital preservation focuses on the actions taken to ensure the accessibility of digital information across time and new technologies.

Digital curation most often refers to the management of open access publishing, or literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. It can include born-digital research, images and projects produced by scholars, students and institutions. Those of us in the visual resources management field have been curating digitally for the past decade.

Most academic libraries have built collections by doing one of two things:

-They have purchased collections to support their local organizations.

-They have curated special collections of unique or valuable items.

The focus for most libraries or collections is changing to concentrate on the second role. In the future, the bulk of what will be curated will be digital. These two highly complementary concepts should take into account the needs of current and future users.

There are several challenges to in this new approach to image collection building: First, the visual resources collection will need to develop the skills and infrastructures to manage collections of open access content, while developing a solid strategy for long-term preservation of digital information. The visual resources librarian will be required to assist the faculty in the creation, evaluation and collection of this digital content. Second, such a strategy will be difficult or dangerous, because in effect it will require canceling or not purchasing vendor materials, or producing visual resources itself, on the assumption that the content will be available in an open access format. This may or may not be true in the long term. It requires a clear collection development policy and budgeting in our visual resources collections and libraries.

Given a definition that ranges from managing to archiving to preserving data along the data life cycle, there are various points were digital curation services can be pursued by visual resources managers: at a point of visual project initiation (articulating the project and pursuing funding); at a point of recent or ongoing visual production; at a point where a larger community needs to be engaged (broadening access); and at a point where time considerations are important (archiving and preserving in a repository).

It behooves us to keep abreast with resources about digital curation; there are many web sites and blogs, conferences and online classes, papers and panels that can be located.

An article of interest: David W. Lewis, “A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21^st Century,” http://hdl.handle.net/1805/953

Writing grant proposals as screenplays

2010-05-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

I recently took a half-day workshop in grant writing by Jonathan O’Brien which was sponsored by an organization offering Technical Assistance Grants. He compares writing grant proposals to writing screenplays - a useful slant for organizing one’s thinking about important elements to be included. “Time is of the essence” took on new meaning for me. He encourages us to present our proposal within a context of urgency and state the consequences if the project is not funded. He suggests this will get your proposal set in the “consider” pile on the first review. Of course the proposal still has to be compelling and well documented to make it through the process toward funding.

While investigating funding source for a couple of computers for an arts organization, I discovered a case for getting to know staff at the granting agencies... On the website the scenarios were all organizational development with no mention of actual equipment funding. By talking to an assistant at the granting agency I learned equipment would be an excellent cause and was encouraged to apply. The trick is to focus on how the equipment, program or materials (digital images) will serve your audience - not how it will serve the staff or department. Connect each reason of need to an overall goal for your organization. Example - With a goal of creating broad support to develop a more stable base for programming by enhancing communication and increasing membership, the computers will allow us to expand our correspondence with the larger community by creating an email list to share upcoming events, reminders, and an avenue for dialog. Specific details also enhances your request. Example - The single ten-year-old computer has crashed several times in the past year bring all work to a halt each time; most recently it caused a week’s delay in sending invitations to artists to participate in an exhibition, which is a major fund-raiser for the operations of the Center.

NOTE:

The National Endowment for the Humanities http://www.neh.gov/

The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources

http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/HCRR.html

Deadline: July 15, 2010

If this is a perfect match for your project and you lack experience in grant proposal writing, get help from someone experienced in Federal grants...

How to catalog Apples and Oranges?

2010-05-12T16:54:00.000-07:00

So you are creating a digital asset system, which will serve a diverse user base. Your institution does not want to build a different management system for each user even if the marketing group may have different needs for digital assets than say the development or curator group. In an educational institution, there may be different subject areas or even in a design studio each individual may have a unique perspective. So, how to build an integrated system that supports all needs?

The key is flexible but clear rules.
First, define a core group of fields that are to be filled all assets. You will want that information which will aid in the management of the assets, such as:

Location of digital file
Title
Usage rights
Owner/creator of digital file

You will also want the fields that will aid users in cross collection searching, which must be derived from a study of your own users' needs when searching digital collection. For example in an art museum, all users would probably be interested in creator of original object, location of original object and possibly its provenance. Thus a search on a particular object might not only turn up an image of that piece, but if doing a cross collection search, also promotional material about it and possibly informal images of it within an exhibit. These fields would then be part of the core fields, which all groups would complete for their digital assets.

Secondly, define data standards before you start - i.e. decide what field will be used for which particular information. You can start with data standards developed for each specialty, but chances are you will also need to create a crosswalk for differing data standards. The important thing is to have each group use the assigned field for all the descriptive metadata, so that your crosswalks are accurate.

A New Reality

2010-04-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

After reading several reviews and seeing an acerbic interview with its author recently on “The Colbert Report,” I have been thinking about the new book “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto” by David Shields and its implications for intellectual property rights in our digital society. Shield’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers, which the author has taken out of context (in some cases, even “revised, at least a little”), and for which he only acknowledges the sources in an appendix, added reluctantly at his publisher’s lawyers’ insistence. Shield’s scorns and is “bored by out-and-out-fabrication” and creativity, and interested in “reality-based art” based on “recombinant” or appropriation art.

Shield’s pasted-together book and defense of appropriation underscore the contentious issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism that have become so prominent in our Internet culture. Even the teaching of visual culture has seen the erosion of the value of intellectual property rights with the ubiquity and ease of finding images of artists’ works with on the Web with the click of a button. With the closure or lack of development of local institutional image collections, many teaching faculty and students are left to forage the Web for images without thought to who produced the art or photographed the object. That digital media are remolding our social landscape, especially arts and entertainment, goes without saying. That they are certainly affecting the methodology of scholarship and research needs is also sadly evident.

It is incumbent on us as part of our consultancy with individuals and institutions over the preservation and digital conversion of image collections not to forget the moral obligation we have to honor intellectual property rights where appropriate. Ignorance is certainly bliss among some faculty I have known, who often ignore basic tenets of copyright (although I suspect that they may be more informed than they let on). Along with technical, preservation, access and metadata issues, we need to educate our clients in the basics of copyright law and tenets of fair use with regard to images. Fortunately, there are very good forums and sites where we can direct faculty and institutions to get the most up-to-date and authoritative information about copyright, especially since major developments and legal decisions affecting academia are occurring with some frequency lately.

The value of artistic imagination and originality, along with the primacy of the individual, is being increasingly questioned in our digital world. So we need to be vigilant where we are able, especially in academic and library settings, as we go about our evangelizing for wider digital access to the fruits of generations of visual artists. Intellectual property rights should also be a “reality” to us, even if the author David Shields would probably disagree. (By the way, I’ve decided that he may be an uncreative minor wacko.)

A nexus of local funding resources

2010-04-14T01:17:00.000-07:00

Let’s dig a little deeper into community foundations as a source of funding for your imaging and metadata projects. Most communities have an umbrella organization bringing together individuals, families, businesses, and institutions to create permanent charitable funds to be used to improve the quality of life for the community. They have a mandate to serve their communities, and can’t limit their focus to a few areas. They also must have a geographic focus. Council on Foundations provides a list of over 850 community foundations found nationwide http://classic.cof.org/locator/ to help you find those that serve your community.

The websites of the foundations that I have looked at are very well organized and allow you to easily find information about their grant opportunities and procedures. Spend a bit of time learning about the foundation and the funders - their focuses and activities before diving into the grants section. And look at previously funded projects. This will also help you get a concrete sense of their mission. Education and arts are still strongly supported by some funders.

Some community foundations strictly manage philanthropy, others will offer other kinds of assistance to non-profit organizations - publications, references, or even hold grant-seeking development workshops. The community foundation is going to know it’s community and the compelling issues.

If you are new to exploring the world of funding it’s a supportive environment to learn the ropes...

Ah Metadata...

2010-04-08T17:47:00.001-07:00

Jason Roy, at the Digital Collections Unit/Digital Library Development Lab, University of Minnesota had a word of encouragement for all those archivists out there while speaking at the VRA conference this year. "You don't have to catalog on the item level."

One of his archives received funding to scan an enormous collection for which they just had finding aids. For those not up on archival cataloging, it is customary to describe a collection by elements within a box, possibly a folder. So, you might have a folder of letters to Mr. Deere over a period of time. Alternatively, you might have a box of the Deere family memorabilia, estimated to cover 20 years of their lives. The archivist will browse through said folder or box, looking for the item he desires. The finding aid will give him a general idea where to best look.

Most digital collections have insisted that archivist must now throw some metadata at each item as it is converted to a digital format, so that an item is retrievable.

Well, Jason, upon being confronted with the daunting task of converting this large collection to a digital format in the conventional manner, said no. Rather, they would place digital files in the appropriately labeled folder according to the box / folder information that existed already and would published a finding aid to direct the searcher to the appropriate "holder," which the searcher could then browse looking for the desired item. No promises that it was there. This is not ideal, but it is as good as the existing condition. When you also throw in the technical ability to tag digital files with further information as researchers retrieve material, it means it will be a growing evolving catalog. In addition, if you then embed the descriptive metadata that you have in each file, the digital file will always be identifiable without being bloated.

This approach would free up so many of our archives, if more special collections could accept it. What do you think?

How Do I Find the Right Words?

2010-04-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

While I did not hear Dr. Judy Weidman explain how cataloging is an art and not a science, I believe that she is on the right track. As an image cataloger, I can relate to her assertions about the cataloging process particularly as it pertains to architecture: uncertainty is always present, design is non-linear and one is imposing an order. In many cases, I simply do not know enough.

Those of us who experienced the development, release, promulgation, and implementation of controlled vocabularies which are now used to tag works or documents that we are cataloging in order to facilitate straightforward retrieval, appreciate the consistency that authorized terminology brings to our cataloging. We avoid many of the pitfalls of databases replete with homographs, synonyms, and worse. Our choices when applying authorized terminology are supported by discipline specific user warrant thus providing welcome consistency both within our local databases and in the aggregate as they are shared within and beyond institutional borders. Our work became much easier when these authoritative vocabularies became widely available.

And, yet, there is so much that I as a visual resources’ cataloger fail to notice or simply don’t or can’t know. While my lack of knowledge might be discipline based, this is not necessarily the case. Images are used so ubiquitously by all sorts of people for many different reasons that it is impossible for a single cataloger facing a data input screen to capture it all. This is where folksonomy--also known as social tagging, social indexing or social classification--becomes useful. This collaborative creation and management of descriptive tags contributed by end users adds an important level of descriptive information that is both democratically based and current. It can provide information that I simply do not and cannot know. This is why the Library of Congress Flickr Project was so successful; this is why museums are building on the experience of Steve.Museum.

Yes, there is still a huge role for our favorite authorized vocabularies to play as we describe images. The Getty Art History Information Program vocabularies (AAT, ULAN, TGN, and soon CONA) along with the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials (TGM-I, TGM II), and the Library of Congress Authorities (NAF, SAF) will continue to provide a base level of consistency, timelessness, and stability to our descriptive practices. We need both approaches.

“Born-Digital” and Born Again

2010-03-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

I read a timely newspaper article on the plane to Atlanta recently to attend the Visual Resources Association annual conference: it mentioned the current exhibition at Emory University (in Atlanta) of an unusual “born-digital” archive of Salman Rushdie. It included four Apple computers (one ruined by a spilled Coke), which housed electronically produced book drafts, correspondence and editorial comments. This archive had presented the university archivists with the choice of simply saving the contents of the digital files, or of also preserving the organization and experience of using these early files. Emory opted for recreating the writing experience of Rushdie that gallery viewers can share in and play with. They can see the progress of written drafts and even make their own editorial comments (which takes a certain amount of chutzpah, considering that it is Rushdie!) “I know of no other place in the world that is providing access through emulation to a born-digital archives,” said Erika Farr, the director of born-digital initiatives at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory.

The unique way the Emory archivists approached the thorny issues of digital preservation nicely illuminates the remarks that Trudy made in her initial blog on “Digital Preservation and Digital Copies.” Trudy pointed out the differences in the value of digital access and digital preservation, and the costs and difficulties that attend to each. Hammering home the significance of digital preservation for me was a session late in the VRA conference titled “Embedded Metadata: share, deliver, preserve.” Digital preservation should not be overlooked in this spectrum when evaluating an archival collection, despite our apparent primary focus on digital access that the visual resources field seems to favor. Context can be as important as content in the visual world, although it is often harder to capture and replicate. The difficulties and expense of archiving generations of equipment, software and the web environment can be overwhelming, but it must be done in order to allow our increasingly rich “born-digital” culture to be captured for future research and enjoyment.

Who is providing funding?

2010-03-13T01:45:00.000-08:00

There are basically two classes of grant makers - foundations and governments

The category of foundations includes private, family, corporate, and community foundations. Start local: Private donors may already be lurking in your membership; family foundations are often looking to support non-profits within their own locale; and community foundations serve as a clearing house for local private and family funding sources, they also may provide management and training for small non-profit organizations. Corporate support may come either from the corporation directly or through a foundation established by the corporation specifically to fund social causes served by non-profit organizations. Some foundations distribute grants nationwide, so research efforts should eventually reach beyond the local area.

Government funding is available at all levels - municipal, county, state, and federal governments. Particularly at the federal level, the process of applying for a grant can be very labor intensive. However, the federal government also passes some portion of it’s funding down to the local levels thus reducing the amount of red tape in applying for those funds.

The Art of Cataloging

2010-03-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

We all have heard the cataloging is an art not a science and last month at the Northern California VRA meeting, I heard Dr. Judy Weidman of San Jose State's SLIPS explain exactly how. She is in the process of developing a thesis on "Design Theory: Creating local vocabularies for images." She is basing much of her design theory on architectural writings, because as she said, they seem the most self-analytical, which is one way to put it. I found her approach very refreshing. It may just be that, as a former architect, her approach is familiar to me, but also I was amazed at how it did work to guide my current efforts. She had several premises: uncertainty is always present, Design is non linear and you are imposing an order. The uncertainty comes from the fact that there is no absolutely right way to describe anything. It is non-linear because one choice influences another. Nor is it organic or meant to be, the cataloger is creating the structure, not revealing it.

The real crux of her argument for me was that one must define the problem before solving it, Obvious I know, but not always done. Many strive to fully and accurately describe an object, when maybe we should be striving to meaningfully describe it. To do that, we must define the audience that is looking for the meaning. As many of us know that can sometimes be the hardest description to accurately create.

“Then Into the Dumpster They Go…” Really?

2010-02-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

This is a good opportunity to build on Leigh's and Barbara's recent posts weaving into this mix the practical advice offered in a recent thread on the Visual Resources Association Listserv.

The initiator of the thread sought collective professional advice on what to do with her academic institution's instructional collection of 160,000 35mm slides. This collection which had supported an academic program and contains some original photography as well as many slides of works that are included in ARTstor and other image databases is no longer being used. The former users and their successors now find their materials online, and the space that this analog collection occupies is needed for other purposes. Our visual resources colleague wanted advice about: 1) the criteria for keeping or discarding a slide, 2) whether or not some slides should be kept on site rather than to send the entire collection into storage, and 4) on the most environmentally friendly way of disposing of discarded slides.

The advice that our colleague received to guide her weeding project was typically pragmatic:

Consider retaining slides that are camera originals contributed by your faculty and students. They can be scanned and added to your institutional collection.

Discard items that match images in existing ARTstor and other local and licensed image collections available in your institution. This may require checking to find exact replications of the images you have in 35mm format although exact matches may not be important if the overall digital coverage of an artist or area is sufficient. Some groups of images will require image by image or site by site checking while others can be eliminated more expeditiously.

Target sections of your slide collection for evaluation that either are or are not well represented in the digital image databases your users have access to. Check item by item—artist by artist—work by work. When you find a digital equivalent of decent quality that is identical or close enough, discard the slide.

Discard slides that you have already added to your institutional digital image collection.

Use your local digital asset management database to generate reports of existing digital holdings to identify those artists, sites, or subject areas for which you have many works and for those works for which you have many digital images. Obviously the reverse strategy might also be useful.

Replace slides purchased from vendors with licensed subscriptions to digital equivalents.

Identify groups of slides that can be quickly cataloged, scanned, and added to your institutional collection. Develop a prioritized list of works or buildings which should be digitized from slides remembering that it is more efficient to scan an image directly from a source publication than to digitize the same image from a slide.

Discard slides that were copied from text book sets; discard slides in teaching sets.

Prioritize the building of your local digital image collection to support current teaching needs.

Consult with the faculty who teach with material from a specific area before undergoing a mass de-accessioning. Some may want to keep these slides for their own collections; some will have important advice about what is important to save and what isn’t. They all need to understand the process.

Use student employees—graduate students, SLIS students, and art history students—by assigning them sections of the collection to evaluate. Lay out a group of slides on a light table to facilitate the process of discarding out of focus, pink, moldy, and duplicate slides before beginning the checking process. This process is often iterative.

It cost less to spend the time checking to determine whether a digital image already exists than to scan, catalog, and upload a new image file.

Consolidate your slide drawers to compact your remaining holdings; expansion space is no longer needed.

While slides are not recyclable, they are often useful to faculty and students for art projects. You may be able to give them away to faculty members or other interested individuals. They could be transformed into collectible items such your own version of the Getty’s “Art to Go Bags” (http://www.gettymuseumstore.org/arttogobag.html). You want to avoid the dumpster which leads to a trip to the local landfill if possible.

Determine whether your weeded collection should be placed in accessible storage so interested patrons of staff will have limited access to it or whether it should go into archival storage.

This brings us to Leigh’s food historian gourmand. The visual fruits of this scholar’s research into all things tasty—his classified collection of 35mm slides as well as the lectures that accompanied these images--is at risk of being lost to scholarship because of a lack of financial and administrative support to transform this corpus into an online resource. Many academic institutions currently face similar situations because those scholars of the visual who are now retiring primarily created and maintained analog slide collections. The digital collections being created by current scholars while equally valuable for preservation present a different set of preservation and descriptive issues.

It is these visual pockets of original research and contribution to visual learning and knowledge that are important to identify, save, and preserve. They play a role in defining the unique at an institution by preserving the essence of the work and personalities of eminent scholars and inspiring teachers over time. These collections contribute to the reputation of an institution by helping to define and high light those intellectual endeavors that distinguish this institution from all others. It is these collections that in digital form enrich learning within the institution and can be shared with others. This is the material that must be rescued from the dumpster to be saved and preserved.

Now comes Barbara’s part—finding the funding to make these projects possible. Her advice is sound and approaches the problem from the bottom starting locally and building upon prior experience. Committed faculty support and endorsement of these projects is a critical part of this process. Yes, funding is often available, but you must persevere to get it.

Bon appetit!

2010-02-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

Recently it was reported that one of the most important photographic archives of the twentieth century was being shipped by trailer truck from New York City to Austin, Texas. The entire collection, more than 180,000 images known as press prints, had been amassed by the Magnum photo cooperative, whose members had been among the most important photojournalists of their time. The archive has been sold to the private investment firm for the family of Michael Dell, the Texas computer tycoon. Fortunately, the new owners have reached an agreement with the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin to locate it there, for study and exhibition, for at least the next five years.

Thomas F. Staley, the director of the Ransom Center, said that it planned to scan every image in the collection, of which Magnum itself had scanned fewer than half, in order to order to make them accessible for historical research and exhibitions.

This is just one of several significant archives of vintage visual material, including those of the New York Times and National Geographic Society, which has recently been targeted for digitization. These are invaluable and irreplaceable repositories of our culture and times. This is heartening, especially in light of the expense and labor involved. But it has me worried about the more modest, locally significant collections with which we are all familiar, which are being consigned to the landfills of history, for want of expertise, direction and funding.

For example, an art historian emeritus at the School of the Art Institute had left, as part of his estate, his considerable personal collection of slides, amassed over forty years of teaching. Much of the collection could be found duplicated in any other academic visual resources collection; however, there were pockets of extraordinary images documenting his particular interest in Food, and Food in Art. He was an original foodie, a gourmand, and enthusiastic lover of the sensual rewards of both art and food. He was a popular lecturer locally at culinary institutes, dining establishments and the art school. His slides included photographic documentation of noteworthy meals, the history of food, and the local cuisine found on his many travels, especially in Mexico. There were whole drawers labeled “French Revolution and food” or “Early American feasts” or even “Spam”!

This fascinating collection may never be accessible to the many and diverse audiences that might appreciate it, mostly because of lack of administrative and financial support. Food historians, art historians and other food enthusiasts will perhaps never taste the joys of this particular research and assiduous documentation. Even more frustrating, in a way, is the lack of a way to capture the pedagogy this historian employed, the apposite and humorous observations he made in his lectures. But at least we have the slides as a visual record--for now.

We need to try harder to identify, evaluate and preserve these visual treasure troves close to home. We are in a strong position to be able to advise and direct digital projects to make these images accessible to those who would appreciate them. There is some urgency to this mission, but also the promise of great adventure and astonishment.

To get the Money... do your homework

2010-02-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

Now everybody is buzzing, saying it is a great idea to digitize the image collections, if only the money can be found... Grants are a great source for this kind of project, but do your homework first. Write out a project proposal that includes a mission statement which complements the larger organizational mission and includes an assessment of the user’s needs. Always keep in mind the benefits of the project to the end user. All your planning, strategizing, and writing at this point will serve you through every step of the process.

Research the equipment and support needs. Once the costs of the hardware, software, and staffing are determined consider the best strategies for convincing colleagues to “put their money where their mouth is”. The old saying “it takes money to make money” is true. Find seed money to allocate from your own budget then start looking for collaborators. The department, the library, IT, and other departments that use images are likely beneficiaries of the project. Go up the chain, often the President’s office, the alumni association, or Friends groups have funds for special projects. Befriend your organization’s development officers. Use each funding commitment to encourage further contributions by the next group you confer with. Continue to cultivate these contacts even if they do not offer funding immediately. Keep everyone informed about your progress.

It does not matter how small each pledge is, it all adds up! Not only are you raising the money, but you are also raising awareness and building a committed endorsement. When you approach the larger community for funding this demonstration of support will almost be more important than the money gathered from the internal sources.

What are the strategies you have used to get your colleagues involved and committed?

Future posts will discuss types of funding organizations, and provide pointers for writing grant funding requests...

Announcing the formation of the ICCoop

2010-02-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

The care and feeding of images

Having worked many years in visual resources, assisting others in the use of images or visual information, we have come together to share with and advise all those working to use the latest technology to improve access to their collections.

We are experienced users of images, who will provide a range of services to assist you in your planning, funding, implementing, training and managing needs and are located across the USA.

In addition to our paid work we also wish to create a resource here and at our site Imageminders.com for all who are involved, or wish to become involved, in the effort to make our collections, whatever the content, more accessible and useful.
We welcome you to the fun.
The ICCoop
Image Consultants Co-operative

Digital Preservation and Digital Copies

2010-01-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

From now on, I am making it a rule to refer to digital files made of physical objects as digital copies. This is to differentiate them from those files now referred to as born-digital, where there is no physical original. I not only believe this is more accurate, but also when discussing the preservation of these files, it is important to note if you are preserving a copy or an original.
When you are preserving a copy, you are mostly concerned with protecting your financial investment represented in real costs as well as in effort. In terms of digital copies, there are several ways that your investment is at risk. Besides the normal liabilities of nature and god, there is digital corruption and mechanical failure. There is also the concern that the format or method of storing the file may become obsolete. In addition, there is the real concern that the standards, under which the file was created, may become obsolete or the quality of your files no longer meets the needs of the rapidly advancing technology. In other words, you may need to recreate them for a more sophisticated technology. This last risk is one many early adopters have already experienced. Actually, several visual resource professionals have observed this within their own careers, where photographs were replaced by lanternslide, which were replaced by film slides, which are now being replaced by digital copies.
Given that we do want to protect these copies as long as they are viable, what is the best method of protecting these digital copies? Two things are important, back up and documentation. Fortunately, digital copies can be duplicated without loss of quality. A copy can be stored on several types of media in several locations, hopefully one in a remote location. In fact, it is best to store a copy of your digital collection in another entirely different geographic location. That is where documentation comes in. You need to know not only where the copies are stored, but also the method and the technical metadata documenting the standards under which the files were created.

When most people are discussing preserving a born-digital file, it is in terms of an archive. This is an original artifact, which may someday have inherent value in its own right. Is that not so? As an archival object, it should be stored in a safe and protected environment. In the digital realm, this means inspection, migration and redundancy and is very costly. In addition, if the digital artifact is valued in its own right, such as a Web posting of the 2004 election, then you must also preserve the software and hardware required to read the file. Think of Thomas Edison’s cylinders. If your collection contained some, would you not want to hear what they heard then?

However, the question to me is a born-digital file of value because of it format or its content. Clearly, it would be a shame not to be able to hear an Edison cylinder, but are we poorer for not preserving all of them? If you accept that it is the content not the format or media that is to be preserved, you might even progress to questioning what media is the best way to preserve that content. In other words is digital media the best way to preserve content.
When we first began to make digital copies of collections, it was adamantly stated that it was for the purpose of ACCESS not preservation. If we stick with that argument now that we have digital originals, for other then protection of investment, should we preserve the originals in their digital format? Do we preserve something, just because it exists or find the best a format in which to preserve it? We could of course always keep a digital copy for access.