February 2008 vol.5, no. 1

Home for Images, The newsletter of the VRA

Notes from the President
By Macie Hall (Johns Hopkins University)
President, Visual Resources Association

This will be my last “Notes from the President” as Allan Kohl will be taking over the leadership role at the San Diego conference.  The Board has been busy with the final stages of planning for VRA 26, and we hope to see many of you there.

VRA 26 in San Diego

Although our online pre-registration is closed, you can still register on site for the VRA annual conference. The conference will be held March 12-16, 2008, in San Diego, California.  The warm, sunny location will add to the excitement of our program, special events and receptions.  VRA 26 will cover topics of significance to our profession: digital imaging issues, information management, visual resources positions in transition, and designing new facilities; and will attract professionals from major academic institutions, cultural organizations, and the commercial sector. In addition to professional sessions, workshops, special interest groups, poster sessions, tours, the Exhibitors' Hall and special events, conference goers will experience San Diego’s museums, famous restaurants, and other cultural attractions.  I hope that many of you will be joining us in San Diego.

Canadian Chapter

I am pleased to announce that the VRA Board has voted to establish a VRA Canada Chapter as requested by petition from the members of the Chapter.  Eric Schwab (Ontario College of Art & Design,  Toronto, Ontario) is serving as Chair, Adam Lauder (University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario), is Secretary, and Peggy Haist (University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario) is the Treasurer.  The new Chapter will present their Bylaws for Board approval now that the Chapter has been recognized.

VRA Canada has had two meetings this past year. As a group, they voted in favor of a VRA Canada-wide chapter, primarily because of the lower number of visual resources curators in Canada as compared to the United States. The Chapter is overcoming the great geographic distance it spans by using technology.  Both of the meetings have been web-cast live, allowing those members unable to attend to participate remotely.

The Chapter has representatives from Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.  As the VRA 27 Conference will be held in Toronto, it is exciting to have the new VRA Canada Chapter in place to assist the Board with local planning and arrangements.  The Board thanks Eric Schwab, Peggy Haist and Adam Lauder for their work in getting the Chapter organized.

ARLIS/NA-VRA Summer Educational Institute 2008

The 2008 ARLIS/NA-VRA Summer Educational Institute (SEI) will be held at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia from July 7th to 13th.  Registration will be opening in late January.

SEI is open to professionals, para-professionals, and graduate level students in visual resources, library science, the fine arts, related humanities fields, and other image information disciplines. The curriculum provides the core knowledge base necessary for any type of image collection management with information on national and international standards, organizations, metadata initiatives, online resources, cataloging guidelines, image resources, and advances in presentation technology.  Anyone who has a need to learn about managing image collections is encouraged to participate. The SEI is designed to serve individuals new to the profession, librarians or other information professionals with new responsibilities to oversee and manage image collections, and visual resources managers and art librarians who wish to update their knowledge of current practices.

Participants will receive a dated Certificate of Completion from ARLIS/NA-VRA, signed by the presidents of both organizations.

^ top of page

Intellectual Property Rights News
Compiled byJane Darcovich (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Intellectual Property Rights Committee

Images that Speak for Themselves: Who are they talking to and what are they saying?
By Jen Green

The World Intellectual Property Organization recently published a patent filed by Google in June 2007.  The patent titled "Recognizing Text in Images” would grant Google ownership over a search technology that would utilize optical character recognition to read text in images. This would allow text in images to be discovered through keyword searches. The potential for this type of new search technique raises excitement as well as a few questions. Thomas Claburn, in a recent Information Week article titled “Google Patent Imagines Robots Indexing the Grocery Aisle”, highlights opportunities that this new technology presents, but also pauses to consider privacy issues that may emerge with the technology.

Google hopes to utilize “Recognizing Text in Images” in conjunction with projects like Google Maps Street View.  This search technology could provide a new level of discovery as users search for a restaurant, retrieve its website, a map, a street view, and an image of the restaurant.  The restaurant’s image, laden with text such as a street name or names of neighboring establishments, could quickly be matched with information typically retrieved by users1. The ability to recognize text in images could dramatically change the world of online search and discovery. Visual resource professionals can imagine the potential for this new technology to change the world of cataloging and tagging. However, in the excitement of gaining opportunities for improved search and access capabilities, some are stopping to contemplate how this new technology could affect user privacy. Claburn mentions privacy concerns raised when Google Map Street View made images of private homes readily available.2 Google argues that images used in Street View are taken from public property and are therefore fair to show in public environments (actual or virtual), but with an increased number of people now able to view and zoom in on windows and screen doors, some are concerned that this is an invasion of privacy.3 In this case, the discomfort lies not in the fact that street images are captured, but they may be accessed and scrutinized by a much wider audience than they were before.

Google’s patent, if granted, may ignite similar privacy concerns regarding un-cataloged images posted online.  Users searching for the nearest Starbucks would gain access to the usual links, but they would also retrieve images of people wearing Starbucks hats and T-shirts. Online users know that images freely posted on the web are openly accessible to all who can find them. There is, however, the potential for discomfort with the fact that an image of your child standing in front of your street sign wearing his McDonald’s T-shirt may appear in the search results for the nearest McDonald’s within that area.

The possibilities afforded by this new technology raise provocative questions. For the average user, are the stakes on privacy higher when the images are tagging themselves? Will users stop to consider the text visible in their images and how that will affect the type and number of people accessing them? Google Maps Street View allows a wider audience to access what was already accessible to whoever wanted to or chanced to pass by.  The ability to recognize text in images would do the same, but may require concerned users to take more control over the images they post online.

1 Claburn, Thomas, “Google Patent Imagines Robot Indexing the Grocery Aisle,” Information Week, 4 (January 2008). <http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticl.jhtml?articleID=205208105>.

2 Ibid.

3 Helft, Michael, “Google Zooms in Too Close for Some,” New York Times, 1 June 2007, http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=google&srchst=nyt#top.

^ top of page

Digital Scene and Heard
Edited by Jacquelyn Erdman (Florida Atlantic University)
Digital Initiatives Advisory Group

Guest Editor Susan Jane Williams (Independent Cataloging and Consulting Services)

Shared Database Tools Using Filemaker Pro

There are currently three collaborative cataloging tools/databases available that have been developed specifically for the visual resources community using Filemaker Pro. All share the advantage of having been developed by experienced members of the VR community, who understand the nature of both the cataloging workflow and meshing with the emergent Core 4.0 and CCO requirements. The three lead developers have submitted the following reports about their tools and the state of shared data in their user groups.

IRIS
By Nori Duncan (Brown University)

IRIS (Image Resource Information System) will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2008. Beginning with a group of seven institutions, the membership is now more than twenty, and is nationwide. IRIS is a cataloging utility in FileMaker software, currently requiring at least version 8. Kathy Brown, our FileMaker consultant, continues to develop IRIS and provide support to users. The currently available version is IRIS 2006. Another version is under development, with the goal of finalizing the implementation of VRA Core 4.0 and CCO, including an xml export to facilitate sharing records.

While IRIS users share a common cataloging system, data sharing achievements have been modest. When a new member installs IRIS for the first time, the institution has the option of keeping the authority tables from Brown University, which are distributed in the files. For the 2005 version of IRIS, the Worktype files of ten institutions were merged and distributed to all, including the institutions upgrading to the new version. For IRIS 2006, a standard “top 100” records were distributed in the Publications table, so that all institutions that share data in the future can also share the information about the source of the data, for the most common print and electronic sources. Recently, the MDID users among the IRIS group collectively worked with Kathy to devise a standard export from IRIS for MDID2. In addition to the Help documentation posted on the IRIS blog, a listserv allows members to query each other about cataloging problems and to suggest improvements. As “bugs” are discovered and fixed, or as suggestions from users are implemented, Kathy posts instructions to the listserv so that system administrators can carry out the updates. If an institution permits access, Kathy can perform updates or troubleshoot problems remotely.

Members of the IRIS Collaborative pay an annual membership fee that funds continued development. For the current academic year, the fee is $1000. After this year, the fee is expected to be reduced, as development tapers off. For further information, see the IRIS blog (http://irisdatabase.wordpress.com/) or contact Norine_Duncan@brown.edu. A user group meeting will be held at the VRA conference in San Diego in March, 2008, to which all are invited.

SnapDragon
By Elisa Lanzi (Smith College)

The SnapDragon: Image Collection Management System is providing a platform for several collaborative projects on the East Coast. SnapDragon is a tool for managing workflow and descriptive cataloging of image assets.  It was developed in 2002 by a Smith College team from the Imaging Center and Educational Technology Services. In 2006, the Smith College group and the University of Virginia Libraries agreed to partner on updating and upgrading SnapDragon in order to better facilitate sharing of descriptive image metadata across collaborative environments. The result is SnapDragon II, a FileMaker Pro version 9 application built with assistance from Dedication Technologies, a database development and consulting firm. SnapDragon II is currently in the beta test phase and targeted for initial implementation/migration at Smith College in January 2008. The University of Virginia anticipates implementation in March 2008. Two other regional associates, Williams College and University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will implement SnapDragon II in 2008. 

The SnapDragon II data structure is based on the VRA Core Categories, version 4.0 and follows Cataloging Cultural Objects as a guide for best practice in cataloging and authority control.  Hierarchical views of “Works” and “Authorities” help to fully describe cultural materials at different levels of cataloging. The SnapDragon II  authority files are available to multiple fields in the “Work” and “Image” records in order to avoid redundancy (e.g., Personal and Corporate Name Authority, Geographic Place Names, etc.). The hierarchical structure allows for additional authority files to be developed to support other taxonomies and controlled vocabularies.

On the workflow side SnapDragon II manages acquisitions, production, recon, de-accessioning, and other activities for multiple media image collections. For example, the asset management section is designed to accommodate images acquisitions that may not require cataloging. SnapDragon tracks workflow for the digitization process. SnapDragon II is designed as a metadata repository - it assumes that end users will use other public discovery and presentation tools. The FMP SnapDragon tables can be configured for any number of export venues using XML or Excel spreadsheets. Smith College is taking advantage of FileMakerPros’s capability to create a dynamic connection to the SQL end of Luna Insight.    

A pilot project for shared cataloging is currently taking place in SnapDragon I. The Smith College Imaging Center and the University of Massachusetts Image Collection Library staff are co-cataloging the Antequam collection of art of the ancient Mediterranean for an ARTstor hosted collection. The Antequam project began when three faculty members from University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College wanted to share personal collections. In addition to faculty images, the Antequam project will include: student images of Gallo-Roman monuments in the context of contemporary land-use; an art collection from a Classics department; and contemporary drawings of ancient gardens. The Antequam content will be available to the Five Colleges community in Luna Insight and ARTstor. Another outcome of the project is that Smith College and the University of Massachusetts are discussing strategies for sharing a primary database.Our ultimate goal is to continue to build copyright-clear content for Five Colleges teaching that is not available on the Web or by license

Currently SnapDragon is being used solely for the above-mentioned collaborative projects. For more information please contact Elisa Lanzi elanzi@email.smith.edu at Smith College.

VireoCat
By Susan Jane Williams (Independent Cataloging and Consulting Services)

VireoCat is the outgrowth of a free database template circulated by Susan Jane Williams in the mid-1990s, starting with FMP version 3 through 5.5. That database was flat and conflated, falling somewhere in usage between VRA Core 2.0 and 3.0. The redesign was long desired, and recognized that many in the VR community were going to be facing the migration from flat to relational, and facing the split in Work and Image records. VireoCat was born of the desire to help achieve that with a free tool. It was developed in 2004, using the draft documents of VRA Core 4.0 and CCO and officially introduced at the Miami VRA Conference in 2005. It has features that can be used with later versions of FMP including 9, but also is at this point still backward-compatible with FMP version 7, for those who have not been able to upgrade. It is fully relational and adheres to Core 4 and CCO.

The current version is VireoCat_v3, released in beta in August 2007 and finalized in January 2008. Most exciting in the new version is an export in XML which validates successfully to the strict XML schema of Core 4.0. There is also a new export to be used as a flattened Excel or csv (comma separated value) file that is useful for export to DAP tools such as CONTENTdm which do not yet support XML. Data samples and the database itself have been sent to administrators of ARTstor and MDID2 and others, to help facilitate creating the stylesheets needed to ingest (import) into those products and many others from a standard Core 4 XML input. This is a major focus of VireoCat. There is an import mechanism in VireoCat v.03 as well, to ingest Core 4 XML documents.

There is a website for VireoCat. On the site you will find links to join the listserv, download the free database tool, and find support documents. Webinars will be held and the recordings posted on the site. There is an active user group which uses the listserv to discuss features and solve problems. While there has been no real data sharing yet, beyond a few authority tables, the listserv can accept attachments, and so it is possible to share XML and other documents. Our third user group meeting will be held at the VRA conference in San Diego in March, 2008, and all are invited. For more information, visit the VireoCat website: http://vireocat.wordpress.com/ or contact Susan Jane Williams at williams.susanjane@gmail.com

Please contact Jacquelyn Erdman with any questions or suggestions for future columns.  For more information on the activities of the Digital Initiatives Advisory Group (DIAG) see http://www.vraweb.org/diag/index.ht

^ top of page

Madison Digital Image Database:
Update Report on Shared Collections and MDID2 version 0.8.1
By Christina Updike, Andreas Knab, and Kevin Hegg (James Madison University)

There are now eight shared collections of over 10,500 images to which MDID institutions can connect remotely.  MDID2 users can share collections with each other, giving institutions access to previously unavailable image collections.  Five collections are provided by Allan T. Kohl, author, art historian and visual resources curator at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  These are Art Images for College Teaching; American Sheet Music of the Early Twentieth Century; Historic Illustrations of Art and Architecture; John Tenniel and the American Civil War: Political Cartoons from Punch, 1860-1865; and the newest collection, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.  Allan Kohl describes this last collection as coming from the nearly 3,000 pages of the publication Battles and Leaders of the Civil War that featured more than 1,000 maps, engraved portraits, spot designs, and other original artwork created by some of America’s top illustrators.  Allan’s project contains a selection of over one hundred of the best examples from among these illustrations, including both battle scenes and camp life, along with details of weapons and uniforms.  Two other shared collections are images from the James Madison University Madison Art Collection and selections from the Millard Sheets Library artists’ books collection at the Otis College of Art and Design. 

The newest collection, made available in January 2008, consists of 650 digital images of English Renaissance and Gothic architecture provided by Dr. Sara Nair James, an art history professor at Mary Baldwin College, VA.  The archive includes cathedrals and parish churches from the Norman Romanesque period; ecclesiastical buildings in the Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular styles; Medieval secular architecture including castles, marketplaces and town halls; Perpendicular Gothic collegiate buildings; Tudor, Elizabethan, Baroque and Neoclassical country houses and churches. This photographic survey was funded in part by the Yum and Ross Arnold Fund and the Jesse Ball DuPont Grant to the Master's of Arts in Literature Program at Mary Baldwin College. Although Dr. James does not teach at an institution that uses MDID2, she is excited to have the opportunity to freely share her images.  The MDID2 software facilitates connection and sharing amongst its community of users with twenty-three institutions remotely connecting to the shared collections.  More information can be found at:  http://mdid.org/mdidwiki/index.php?title=Shared_collections

In the September 2007, JMU released version 0.8.1 of the MDID2 software, which includes several new features and functionality.  These new features increase the usability of the software as an institutional visual resource.  There is a new full-text search for the database that allows the use of several new special characters in the fields on the search screen to improve search results.  For approximation, a user would enter a search term followed by a tilde (~) to find terms that are similar.  This also allows you to find misspellings or words with accented characters; such as, "cezanne~" will find "Cézanne".  For multiple search terms, a user would enter multiple words in a search field to find records that match at least one term.  If a user prefixes any of the terms with a plus (+) sign, the search will find only records that have that term.  For example, entering the terms "brick mortar" will find records that contain one or both of "brick" and "mortar"; however, entering  "+brick mortar" will find records that contain "brick" and "mortar".  A user can also exclude terms by prefixing a search term with a hyphen (-), resulting in the search excluding that term.  For example, "-painting picasso" will find records that contain "Picasso" but not "painting”.  When searching multiple collections in an MDID2 repository or viewing results from multiple collections, the combined field labels are shown along with the Dublin Core mapped field labels.

Other 0.8.1 features include a new data import feature and improved ImageManager helping database administrators to increase their efficiency in loading records and image files into the system.  The prior data conversion tool has been replaced with a new import for CSV, TSV, and XML files utilizing interactive field mapping.  This data import feature now auto-detects file encoding to preserve accented characters.  The improved ImageManager now remembers the last server URL and user name.  Personal images are no longer listed in ImageManager which slowed the loading of the tool.

Changes have also been made to the browse page to improve layout and navigation.  A new “Browse Collections” screen shows frequently used terms in every field of a collection.  The more times a term is used, the larger and bolder the text font becomes.  Clicking on a term or date will bring up a results page with the thumbnails that pertain to that term.   On the “Search Results” screen a new compact view has been added to the “less” and “more” options.  When a user selects show “no” information, the display results appear as rows of thumbnail images with no text.  When the mouse is rolled over an image, a text ribbon displays the data fields “Title, Date, Work Type, and Creator Name”.  All user tool icons appear under the thumbnail along with the ability to select an image for a slideshow, suggest it for moderation, and indicate it as a favorite.  When viewing a “Search Results” page using the “full” catalog display, a new active link indicates the number of slideshows an image is used in.  Clicking on that link connects to a list of those slideshows.  This feature is very helpful for collection administrators in making decisions about deleting or editing images and records.  More information on the new features can be found at: http://mdid.org/mdidwiki/index.php?title=Change_log.  The wiki page can be accessed at: http://mdid.org/mdidwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

^ top of page

Books, Articles, and More
Compiled by Elizabeth Darocha Berenz (ARTstor)
With contributions from Allan Kohl (Minneapolis College of Art and Design), Heather Seneff (University of Washington) and Joan Beaudoin (Drexel University)

John Tenniel and the American Civil War: Political Cartoons from Punch

The Library of Congress Collaboration with Flickr

My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven

Shorpy: The 100 Year Old Photo Blog

NISO's "A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections" (3rd ed., Dec. 2007)

Joan Beaudoin, Drexel University, assembled the following list of references from a study of image users’ behaviors that she has been working on:

Image Sources
Compiled by Marlene Gordon (University of Michigan-Dearborn)

Please send your recommendations to Marlene Gordon, mgordon@umich.edu.

Positions Filled
Compiled by Anne Norcross (Kendall College of Art & Design)

Roger Williams University
Elizabeth Ehrnst is the new Visual Resources Curator at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Elizabeth recently received her MLS from Indiana University, specializing in Fine Arts Librarianship. While at Roger Williams University she will oversee the use and management of the analog and digital image collections as well as plan for the evolution of the Visual Resources Center as it becomes part of a integrated suite of academic support services working to better serve the expanding digital media needs of the University.

College of the Holy Cross
On January 2, 2008 the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts welcomes Janis DesMarais (formerly Janis Manzo), as Visual Resources Coordinator. Her responsibilities include evaluating and developing a digital image resource collection which will initially focus on the needs of the Visual Arts department, and then on the needs of the entire college. Janis said of her new position, “This is an exciting challenge for me and I welcome all input and suggestions from the experienced VRA membership.  I will be attending the conference in San Diego this March and look forward to meeting more members of the organization.”

Amherst College
Catherine (Katie) Winston has joined Amherst College as the new Digital Resources Librarian.  Her full-time positions began January 2, 2008. Katie's primary focus will be working with the digital asset management system, DigiTool. She reports directly to D.P.Milliken, Curator, Visual Resources.

Upcoming Conferences
Compiled by Brooke Cox ((DePauw University)

National Art Education Association
National Convention
March 26-30, 2008
New Orleans, LA
http://www.naea-reston.org/convention.html

Open Repositories Conference 2008
3rd International Conference
April 1-4, 2008
Southampton, England
http://or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

Computers in Libraries
23rd Annual Conference
April 7-9, 2008
Arlington, VA
http://www.infotoday.com/cil2008/

Museums and the Web 2008
April 9-12, 2008
Montréal, Canada
http://www.archimuse.com/conferences/mw.html

Digital Library Federation Spring Forum
April 28-30, 2008
Minneapolis, MN
http://www.diglib.org/

Art Libraries Society
36th Annual Conference
May 1-5, 2008
Denver, CO
http://arlisna-mw.lib.byu.edu/denver2008/

New Media Consortium Summer Conference
June 11-14, 2008
Princeton, NJ
http://www.nmc.org/conference/2008-nmc-summer-conference

ALA Annual Conference
June 26–July 2, 2008
Anaheim, CA
http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2008a/home.htm

EVA (Electronic Visualisation and the Arts)
July 22?]25, 2008
London, England
http://www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/

Chapter News
Compiled by Trudy Levy (Image Integration)

The Greater New York Chapter
Submitted by Bill Kwan (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

VRA/NY and the Image Library of the Met have co-organized a program on Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) service for February 5th.   In addition to VRA/NY members, both ARLIS/NY members and related committee members of CAA are also invited. By January 23rd, more than 60 persons have expressed their interest to attend the event.

The IAP project is a joint initiative between ARTstor and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for allowing scholars to download and use, free-of-charge, high-resolution digital images for scholarly publications. Initially, more than 1,700 images representative of the broad range of the Metropolitan Museum's encyclopedic collection are available through the ARTstor interface to users at all ARTstor participating institutions. With time we hope to grow the IAP service to include images from multiple sources.

Nancy Allen, Director of Museum Relations of ARTstor, has accepted our invitation to give a presentation on the IAP project. She will give an overview of the scope and nature of the IAP project and a live demo of the IAP interface. We are planning to share some of the usage statistics we have been gathering since its inception in March 2007.

^ top of page