Ofness

Steve is Alive and Well

Denise — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:35:30 +0000

Social Tagging of Art. What a brilliant concept. That's STEVE. I first heard a presentation about the Steve project several years ago at Metropolitan New York Library Council. The presenters said that the name "steve" had no meaning and was just pulled out of the hat. Can't help thinking, though, that S(ocial) T(agging) had something to do with it. In any case STEVE: The Museum Social Tagging Project continues and the site has evolved and improved. Steve is "a collaboration of museum professionals and others who are interested in using social tagging to enhance access to museum collections and engage visitors with collections. We build open source software (the steve tagger), advocate for social tagging methods, and do research into the effectiveness of tagging. You can read much more about our work, which is funded, in part, by grants from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, at www.steve.museum." The online Steve tagger can be used by... Read more

Subject Access to Art Images in a Nutshell

Denise — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:19:44 +0000

When I first began delving into online access to images, I focused on copyright and other practical issues. Ultimately my interest turned to the actual retrieval of images. I read a lot online, including journal articles and books. Gradually I began to get the lay of the land and learned the lingo. It was quite a while before I discovered Introduction to Art Image Access, edited by Murtha Baca, but when I did I knew that this was the place I should have started. Having come from searching inside the forest it was a revelation. I don't regret my path, having a penchant for doing things the hard way and for the search itself. But for anyone curious about the subject this is where I would suggest starting. It is a clear, consise, and comprehensive introduction to the "subject of images" in the context of providing access to the images. This online publication, which is also available in print, "addresses the issues that underlie the intellectual process of... Read more

LIFE with Google: Consider the Alternative

Denise — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:51:20 +0000

The new LIFE photo archive hosted by Google is a rich trove of images dating back to the 1750's. Google has opened up the archive to the public and ultimately it will contain over 10,000,000 images, most of which have never been published. This is an exciting and amazing digital collection and Google is to be praised for its continued adherence to its "mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The images may be used for non commerical purposes without any speial permission. Aside from the enormous scope of the collection, Goggle is making available relatively large versions of these images. From what I can see, the majority of images are available with one side equal to or larger than 1280 px. This size easily fills the screen of the majority of computer monitors. While not high resolution, this size does allow users to see the image in enough detail to examine and use it for a number of purposes. In... Read more

Searching Art by Subject at the TATE

Denise — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:12:36 +0000

Here's the good news. There are a lot of Search Terms... The TATE has used a relatively expansive list of subjects to organize a prominent subject search capability for all the works in its online collection. According to the site there are 66,062 works of art by 3,075 artists in the collection, "every work in the Collection has its own online information page," and "the majority are illustrated, though this is not always possible due to copyright restrictions." The Terms Organized Hierarchically... The subject search option is prominently displayed on the home page of the collection along with the simple and advances search options. In addition to a standard text search box, the subjects are presented an expandable list of 16 main categories, as shown on the left, for browsing. There are (by my count, which could be off) 155 second level subcategories. Each of these subcategories is further divided into between 2 and 100 or more subcategories of its own. ... Read more

Reconciling Scholarship with Stewardship

Denise — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:39:32 +0000

On January 5, 2009 the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science published a document titled Best Practices for Access to Images: Recommendations for Scholarly Use and Publishing. To my ears it reads far more like a thoughtful manifesto than a statement of best practices. But perhaps these two things are just a matter of degree. This short document was the end product of a year long process initiated by the Institute, which "brought together a small group of scholars, curators, publishers, and other stakeholders" to reflect on the difficulties faced by scholars in obtaining access to the visual materials which are increasing essential to their work and yet soaring in price, due to a variety of factors including the "for-profit approach to digital cultural heritage," the "fear of abuse and theft" of these works by curators, and by often improper reliance on claims of copyright by institutional owners of unique works. As summarized by Christine von Oertzen in... Read more

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

Denise — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:55:17 +0000

The Good News The recent news that "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... Read more

The Metropolitan Flunks Subject Search

Denise — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:21:49 +0000

General Description The digital image collection available on the website of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a mixed bag. I refer, of course, not to the contents of the collection, but to the display and searchability of the subject matter of the works in the collection. The Met's description of the digital collection is as follows: The Collection Database is a searchable database of artworks and related materials from the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An individual database record includes information about an object as well as images, when available. The Museum's curators have selected several works of note within the collection Database as Highlights of the collection. Due to the extremely large number of objects in the Museum's permanent collection, not all artworks are currently available in the collection Database. Furthermore, information contained in the database records is, in some cases, incomplete, and all information is... Read more

WORLDCAT for Images?

Denise — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:14:51 +0000

I've written before about the ideal for access to heritage digital images. In case you don't recall I described it as follows: Universal, scalable, trustworthy, sustainable, and permanent access to all heritage digital images from the publicly accessible to the privately held, including those from all museums and cultural institutions, archives and libraries, private collections, and publishers, using a system of organization that maximizes entry points and interconnections between objects and relevant texts, to facilitate retrieval for all imaginable purposes, through interfaces which have the capability of searching across all platforms, providing high resolution images, thumbnail browsing, copying and reuse for non-commercial purposes, and links to contextual materials, with continuously updated information of the applicability of worldwide copyright status and contact information for obtaining permissions. While it is utopian, this ideal provides a context for looking at... Read more

Public Art Works for 160 € (Euros) a year

Denise — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:13:15 +0000

Proprietary digital art collections make me mad. As do all the art resources online that cost money. It’s my open source, information should be free, mentality, I guess. I understand that everyone needs to make a living, and that it takes time and resources to put together and maintain a digital collection. I don’t have an answer to this paradox. But I didn’t say I did. Nevertheless it makes me mad. Here is an example: The art-public.com online library. As described on its website it “focuses on the role of art in urban projects. Recent creations and works in progress are organized by category and illustrated with examples from around the world, with an emphasis on the principal cities of Europe.” The website also claims that “all subjects feature examples of artwork with commentary and color photo illustrations.” A list of the types of works included is at the end of this article. With respect to the main subject of Ofness, the... Read more

A Mini History of Pre-Digital Image Collections

Denise — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:29:01 +0000

Ancient History Prior to the development of digitization techniques and the internet, image collections, typically slides, were organized by individuals who used the slides for teaching, or by individual holding institutions, often in unique or idiosyncratic ways. The systems for organizing these slides were relatively simple and had limited access points. While there were common elements, there were many differences, both in the character and depth of the organization. Recent History Since digitization of images emerged radical changes have occurred. Many associations involved in this areas, of professionals who handle these collections, of institutions who house them (including colleges, universities, museums, and archives), and of researchers who use them, turned their attention to the ways that digitization can be harnessed. Individually and collectively they have developed planning procedures for large-scale conversion of analog images to digital format, systems for... Read more