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Wednesday,
March 8, 2006
11:00am - 12:30pm
Seminar 3: Almagest,
a new open source database and presentation
program
As institutions all over the
country are going digital, interest is
growing in image presentation in the classroom.
Almagest, a multimedia database for teaching
and learning developed at Princeton University
is capable of displaying a variety of
file types, including, text, video, and
audio files, as well as images and their
identifying information across the internet
using standard web browsers. Recently,
this software has been made open source.
This session will present Almagest’s
many features, what it necessary to install
and support an Almagest environment, description
of shared scholarly images made available
in the Almagest format, and how the program
is being used by faculty members from
many disciplines.
The Almagest software has been used in teaching
for nearly a decade at Princeton, and
was released last March as open source
software. More information on the Almagest
open source initiative can be found at
the following URL:
http://www.princeton.edu/~almagest/opensource
The source code is available at
http://www.sourceforge.net
This session will represent the historical
development of Almagest, its use in teaching
at Princeton, its basic functionality
that includes:
· Automatic creation of derivative
images
· Side by side image comparison
and commentary
· Zooming and panning capabilities
· Multimedia support, including
video and music
· Annotation and crop tools
· Export to PowerPoint
· Expanded search interface
· Creation of persistent presentations
with the ability to isolate image details
and
add commentary to all
file types
· Support for a variety of data
structures
· Multi-disciplinary applications
· Integration of personal collections
and self-upload tools
In addition, the local requirements to support
and install an Almagest installation,
will be discussed, included server and
database needs, IT and cataloging staff
support, and recommended development and
fail-over environments. The core of this
presentation will discuss a third aspect
of Almagest that has recently been introduced
is the Almagest Exchange.
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/exchange/
The Exchange is intended to be a shared
collection of teaching images, available
for any scholarly use. The database will
be hosted at Princeton, with collections
residing at other contributing institutions.
The Almagest Exchange will provide a service
to those scholars residing at institutions
where local installations of the database
may be impractical. Currently, three teaching
collections have been added to the Almagest
Exchange. These include:
· The California State University
IMAGE project (Kathy Cohen)
· The Art Images for College Teaching
collection (AICT; Allan Kohl)
· Rome, the Eternal City (Professor
John Pinto)
Other collections are currently being processed
for inclusion this site.
Practical uses of this growing collection
will be among the topics of discussion
at this session.
Moderator: Dr. Kathleen
Cohen, California State University IMAGE
Project
Speakers:
Dr. Janet Temos, Princeton University
Dr. Kathleen Cohen, California
State University IMAGE Project
Dr. Kevin Perry, Princeton University,
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