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| Project participants: | Griffith University - Queensland College of Art Library, Information Services, INS. |
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| Contact officer/s: | Jennifer Brasher, Librarian (email J.Brasher@griffith.edu.au, phone 07 3875 3136 or fax 07 3875 3133). |
| Project
description: QCA LIDA Image Catalogue incorporates records for the art slide
collection (60,000 slides) and a collection of high resolution Australian
artist digital images: 38,000 text records can be searched by creator, title,
dimensions, life dates, year of work, nationality/country, century, genre,
materials, location, supplier, subject keyword, image details, art
style/period. A related web site is in creation, to facilitate multi-campus
access to the collection for academics and clients. 1500 Australian Art digital
images have been scanned at JPEG high quality compression from 35 millimetre
slides with copyright permission from the artists. Recently that permission has
been extended to not just view only high-resolution image display but the use
of the medium resolution of the image for electronic web classes. A main intent
is to maintain a strong local area (Queensland focus) to fit into a concept
held in ARLIS of a distributed National collection, as well as to supplement
access across the spectrum of contemporary Australian art practice, thereby
creating a valuable resource beyond selections represented in Australian art
galleries and museums. Much Australian and particularly Queensland art is not
officially visually documented and accessible for research. Collaboration from
the Queensland Artworkers Alliance has provided a network to local artists
contact details and their website advertises our project aims.
Currently available for searching at the QCA reference desk, a user friendly client interface is in development for independent client access on a LAN and for web access using Filemaker Pro 5 Unlimited 5.0. Methods of networking and display for high resolution images are being investigated, such as wavelet compression used in the new JPEG 2000 file format and various graphic interface softwares now available. Currently a project is underway to barcode the slides for a circulation system improving on the previous method of photocopying the physical resource the 35-millimetre slide for each loan record. These loans were manually checked on return against the photocopy, before a bar-coded slide envelope was returned against the client's name on the Advance lending system. The envelope has an attached pocket with film cleaning rag. Digital formats can also become corrupt or damaged necessitating backup or re-supply. For thumbnails of all the holdings, outsourcing is an option. Due to copyright issues many slides would not be able to be scanned at a high resolution. Thumbnails are not considered copyright, and could provide the much-desired visual browse choice for the catalogue, linking to high-resolution images where available. If not the slide could be retrieved by the client from the publicly accessible slides held in archival plastic sleeves in steel filing cabinets. At present clients must travel to QCA library to view and retrieve slides, but the online visual thumbnail catalogue could also allow inter-campus holds and borrowing. However the average image loan limit is 100 slides, and even more for academics and postgraduates who wish to study an entire body of work for a topic or by an artist eg Fred Williams, a famous modern landscape artist, has done several hundred works. In these instances viewing and study onsite might be desirable. For viewing the digital image near future options could be to marry the database to a fully developed front-end graphic interface currently being assessed. Eg Luna Insight from the Getty Institute is in use at New York Public Library. These are very expensive, but beautiful. Another option is to migrate the data into an all in none relational database purpose specific to fine art images, such as EmbARK, based on 4th Dimension software, also fairly expensive, as its web kiosk alone costs over $7,000. However the new JBDC driver in Filemaker creates Java applications and applets using standard Java development tools as front-ends to Filemaker Pro databases. It is now possible to create the interface within the software and directly transfer to the Internet. |
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| URL of site: | QCA LIDA, Australian artist's site is in co-development with the QCA Library site using Adobe GoLive and Director and Shockwave software. Metadata, using Griffith protocols, is now being added in the final stages of this project. |
| URL for project information: | http://www.griffith.edu.au/ins/collections/slides.html |
| Content: | 38,000 records may be searched by creator, title, dimensions, life dates, date of work, nationality, country, century, genre, materials, location, supplier, subject keyword, image details, art style/period. |
| Digitisation policy and priorities: | The digitisation policy is to meet the
needs of tertiary art research and the electronic classroom for Queensland
College of Art curricula. Tertiary art research requires high quality digital
images. Priorities are to gain copyright to internally digitise local art, and
to purchase quality digital images in digital licensing agreements as more
becomes available. Also the new site for QCA at Southbank is hoping to be
equipped with a powerful network to transport megabyte and even gigabyte files
in a timely fashion. The current Morningside site cannot meet this capacity.
Server, network and copyright security choices in relation to a visual image database need to be addressed to cater for the Southbank site and the multi-campus need. Discussion with IT image specialists for Southbank are in process, as DVD gigbayte files will have to be networked in the future. A future web interface for high-resolution digital delivery may involve wavelet compression techniques, e.g. the new JPEG 2000 digital file format. Backup is currently on gigabyte JAZ Discs and a local QCA RAID server. |
| Timetable: | Began in March 1993. Bar-coding, circulation system, web site, LAN access for QCA & web access for Griffith University due in 2001; thumbnail browsing for all images, LAN and web access to high resiolution digital images due in 2002. |
| Budget and funding: | Project funded internally - $50,000-$100,000 plus. Various internal grant applications have ensured continued progress. |
| Staff resources: | 1x Part Time Librarian; 2x part-time cataloguers (a scanning) 26 hours per week; 3x part time shelves. Digitisation undertaken substantially in-house. |
| Technical standards: | Scanning resolution: 300 PPI; File format: JPEG at highest standard of (1 to 3 megabytes expanding to 18 megabytes); Computer: 2 Mac G4s, 1 Mac G3; Digital Equipment: (initially a Kodak RFS 300 Scanner borrowed from photography), Nikon SuperCoolScanner. Cannon 35-ml camera. The Nikon scanning software quickly eradicates faults/dust damage/etc. Storage devices are Jaz Discs and a RAID Serve. |
| Cataloguing and indexing: | Basis: Simons and Tansey Classification
System from the University of California, Santa Cruz was the initial basis.
Physical organisation by nationality/century/artist except early Australia,
which includes visiting artists such as Von Guerard and Buvelot in the
Australian area. Colour coding of printed labels for slides by medium, e.g.
painting, sculpture, computer, performance. Metadata is based on the Visual
Resources Association's Core Record for Images. In-house variations on
vocabulary and mediums suit local needs. Controlled vocabularies: image
thesauri: the Getty Foundation's Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT),
ICONCLASS, Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), LCGN, Library of Congress
Graphic Names.
1/4 of the collection now has full analytical cataloguing in subject and image detail fields. All 38,000 text records can be searched by creator, title, dimensions, life dates, year of work, nationality/country, century, genre, materials, location, supplier, subject keyword, image details, art style/period. |
| Comments: | Contemporary Australian artists donate
generously or we purchase images at $A3 per slide. Artists realise that this is
not a profit driven venture, offering artists and art students/researchers a
service, by making these images more accessible on a large image/slide database
searchable by keyword. Image quality is also paramount for serious art
research.
The old prevalent questions "I want all your artworks that include images of silver chalices, and I need them now!" and "I want all artworks with a feminist theme" is less ominous for QCA Library staff. Analytical cataloguing of an image caters for the art world's desire to explore art from any era in terms of a theme, a concept or an icon. As more suppliers provide a basic computer record to accompany an image our cataloguing backlogs may become more manageable, with cataloguing staff adding on entries to suit local needs. Greater accessibility and user independence has been created. The database is already providing instant access to the slide collection by keyword searching in any or all the fields noted. The future result could be a thumbnail linked a record for a slide format or to a medium resolution digital image for print or download and a read-only high-resolution image for big screen projection or zoom (currently analogue, soon to be slide/ digital image) quickly locatable for the client. Digital thumbnail browsing will ensure longevity of the analogue slide format reducing undue handling during selection viewing. Improved accessibility results in user satisfaction and increased loans. Automation results in greater efficiency, less individual staff assistance in locating images, more staff time maintaining and adding to the image catalogue. As more are fully analytically catalogued the need to do staff searches for academics needing hundreds of images for course preparation will be largely contained. E.g. recently artist Jay Younger needed many hundreds of slides for a profile for a course she was planning on public art and the local community. Cataloguing backlogs have been reduced from the days when slide labels and catalogue cards were hand-written. Slide labels are now printed out, cards were eradicated. The digital aspect of the project is simply another image format, and we're sure the formats' technological and copyright concerns will fall into place. The main concern is to remain flexible with the changing technology. Digital formats will require less floor space, but will require more funding for digital storage, networking and backup. Hopefully as digital image suppliers improve image quality and holdings, and we move the the Southbank site with an adequate networking strcuture we will lease a digital format. Digital image leases entail time periods such as 3 years, with renewal fees, and are not cheap at present. Currently the majority of key images are still unavailable in digital format from suppliers, particularly those in copyright, mainly current images i.e. where the artist has not been dead for longer than 50 years. Images in demand here are current works from New York, London and local shows often only available in analogue slide format from suppliers. Digital image quality is often a poor cousin: a 35-millimetre slide equates with an 18-megabyte digital file, and digital suppliers are currently only offering kilobyte files only just suitable for small screen viewing and often below standard. Digital image quality can be extremely variable. At the top end, Bill Gates at the CORBIS image empire has purchased entire libraries such as the Bettman Archives, or the Da Vinci sketchbooks and rights to artist's works such as the famous American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams' estate, but seems to offer them at commercial rates of hundreds of dollars for multi-megabyte drum scanned images or as low quality thumbnails or in CD educational packages that cannot be copied. Otherwise some image databases are being networked at sub-quality resolutions on the web due to information highway constraints, unsuitable for serious art research nor indeed for any research. E.g. Recent newspaper press has revealed scientists and medical professionals have been upset by low-resolution image data, which they find misleading. Wavelet compression by cabling is a current buzzword that allows zooming through the net on gigabyte files. Its slowed by the net, but could be a LAN solution! On the web you only see an enlargement of one section of an image as opposed to the quick big screen image from a 35-millimetre slide. Optical fibre cabling and Firewire - a Mac protocol, gigabyte Ethernet can be used for speedier network infrastructure. Muted future paths, Quantum computing may make information TCP/IP management of smaller packets of information travelling on cable and reassembling into an original message for internet delivery old-fashioned. It could be minute and fast, but this is still science fiction like Qantum computing, gigabyte files could be globally networked at lightening speed. Viewing hardware, screen resolutions and video RAM will all have to be souped up and refined. This is currently also still an expensive option. A high quality image of any format is indisputable for serious art research. For tertiary research, an ideal standard is a pool of 250,000 high quality images. This collection will remain a mixture or jigsaw of various formats, including print, analogue and digital for some time to come, until all issues fall into place. |
Project managers wishing to update the details of their Australian digitisation projects, should email the changes to alg@nla.gov.au.
Last modified: August 09 2004.
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