Christine L. Sundt
Visual Resources Collection
Architecture & Allied Arts Library
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403

I. INTRODUCTION

Images occupy a special place in most libraries, and as dictated by their medium and content, usually with unique systems for organization and access. The growing interest in images as vehicles for communication among generations nurtured by television, videos, and instantaneous photography has reinforced the need to address the issue of access to images and to examine the proliferation of visual documentation within the "new media."

This article examines the complex history of access to image collections. It also focuses on the recent use of electronic resources, the World Wide Web (WWW), and in particular the Image Directory to overcome difficulties and challenges usually associated with image access.

II. IMAGES PAST

Finding an image to support study and research is anything but easy. Images were as they are today important in many academic disciplines. For some, like art and architectural history, the image is essential - a necessary stand-in for an object or structure and a way to see and study the thing or place when physical access is impossible. By its very nature art is global. Being able to see it, review it, study it, and compare it, usually necessitates a mechanism to reproduce it. Since the early nineteenth century, the photograph or other photographic media, especially slides, have aided research, study, and teaching. Before then, hand- and mechanically-produced images - woodcuts, engraving, lithographs, offset prints, to name but a few - served the same function but at greater cost and often limited production.

In the past, access to these diverse images and their descriptive data was a challenge. Gathering images together in one place and/or creating indices to these were among the most immediate solutions. Housing images in central places was perceived as a reasonable beginning for facilitating access, and creating local finding aids was the next logical step.

Collecting or amassing images is what led to the development of well-known and highly respected picture archives such as the Bettmann Archive (http://directory.compuserve.com/Forums/BETTMANN/Abstract.asp) , Hulton Deutsch Collection (http://www.u-net.com/hulton/about.html), the Bridgeman Art Library (http://www.bridgeman.co.uk/), Harvard University Art Museums Visual Collections, and the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Arts in London (http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/wp/court.html), along with the countless other picture collections in libraries, museums, archives, and organizations worldwide. The underpinnings of these collections were the guides to their contents. Also, highly skilled picture researchers navigated through the images in ways that the guides could not. The images, mostly photographs and illustrations, became the mainstay of commercial and educational publishing.

A. IMAGE RESOURCES: HISTORIC HIGHLIGHTS

Developing access or informational guides to collections has a long and interesting history. Among the earliest image reference tools must be documentary paintings, such as the well-known genre depicting a Kunstkammer [literally, art room, more accurately a cabinet of curiosities] (Lipp, 1994). Numerous early art collections are known today because of such paintings, meticulously reproducing the artworks or treasures and their collectors in the great houses of Europe. Johann Zoffany (1734/1735-1810), an artist born in Germany, who studied in Italy, and who worked extensively in England produced a number of such works. Best known among these might be "The Tribuna of the Uffizi," (illustrated at http://he.net/~mega/eng/egui/monu/uft.htm), 1772-1780 [Royal Collection, Windsor Castle], "The Antique Room at the Royal Academy at New Somerset House," [Royal Academy of Art, London], and Charles Townley's Library at 7 Park Street, Westminster. 1781-1783 [Townley Hall Art Gallery]. These works show the interiors of rooms filled with recognizable artworks being presented to visitors by their collectors.

Another medium for referencing artworks was through prints and their sale or publication. The public's desire to own copies of famous works by artists stimulated the practice of making or commissioning prints after the original works. In 1731/1732, William Hogarth (1697-1764) produced a series of moralizing oil paintings in London, called the "Harlot's Progress," with a companion set of engravings modeled after the originals soon following. The success of the prints was sufficient to stimulate other morality-theme print series based on his original works including the "Rake's Progress," 1735, and "Marriage a la Mode," 1743-1745. The ease and efficiency of reproducing and in some cases pirating prints after original paintings led Hogarth to push for the legislation of the Copyright Act in England in 1735 as a means of protecting artists from unauthorized copying of their works and the resulting loss of profits. The print as both an image document and a reasonable substitute for a costly oil painting by this time was well established.

With the invention of photography, the camera became the tool of choice for documenting and cataloging art and architecture. Artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) engaged in photography as a means of promoting and publishing their works (Faxon, 1992). Photographers used their medium to capture the remains of past civilizations, for example, those in ancient Rome (Wester, 1992). Even the great museums in London, namely the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum) used photography to create catalogs or documents of their holdings as well as to record important events at the museum. Anthony Hamber (1996) in writing about the British Museum includes the following quotation of 1857:

Photographic pictures of the ivory carvings would be valuable and interesting to the public, and would be the best inventory for the use of the Museum.... Mr. Hawkins would also wish that Photographic pictures should be made of all objects of antiquity acquired by the museum as the best mode for future identification. It would not be necessary that each object should form a separate picture but similar objects might be grouped together, which would save much expense. (p.382)

Photography, introduced in 1839, was still a relatively new medium in 1857. The ease by which an image could be created is a factor in the profusion of photographic documents that remain from these early decades. Maintaining order and logic among these new documents was also necessary. Each collection of images had its own method for organization and retrieval, some abundantly detailed, others with only summary notes. The next apparent need was to assemble data about these images that would make them accessible to more than just the museum personnel. By the end of the century, photographic study collections were being formed at museums and for teaching the arts at colleges and universities (Irvine, 1979, pp.25-31).

1. THE CARNEGIE ART REFERENCE SET

Teaching the "arts" opened up new markets for photographic images. In 1923, recognizing that educators in that day were keen to "advocate a return to the Renaissance spirit which combines the study, enjoyment, and practice of the arts," the Carnegie Corp. produced the Carnegie Art Reference Set for Colleges (Carnegie Corp., 1939). The set consisted of 2,073 photographs and color prints, 45 large color facsimiles, several portfolios, and approximately 200 books. The images were selected to represent "standard material useful in teaching the evolution and appreciation of the arts, and were meant for students to study at their leisure." Each image, a photographic reproduction of art or architecture, had a fully descriptive label and a unique number. Based on the documentation in the handbook, the data was organized following the traditional chronology and methodology for the study of art history. The unique number on each image appears to have been arbitrarily assigned since it does not follow the logical ordering of names, places, or titles included in the handbook. Clearly the handbook was the key to the collection as well as the suggested classification for those 200 or more colleges and high schools in the United States and the "British Dominions" receiving this generous donation. For many of these institutions, the Carnegie set formed the nucleus of their image collections. Other institutions outside this select core were not so fortunate; their collections had to rely on other means to acquire images.

B. IMAGE ACQUISITION

Even though the Carnegie Collection provided a foundation for images needed for an arts curriculum, the task of assembling other relevant materials was yet to be addressed. Two thousand photographs may appear to be a reasonable number of images that could be used for any given presentation, but what if the instructor wanted to talk about artists or places not provided in the set? What if several teachers needed to use the images simultaneously?

1. RESOURCES FOR THE VISUAL ARTS

Educational "humanities" images -- prints, slides, photographs, and filmstrips - covering topics broadly from the arts to the sciences are a classroom staple (Roberts, 1994). Typically these images were used to describe and explain the meaning of art and the development of culture. They were displayed to enable study and discourse. They also served as a memory-aid for the underlying works when access to those works was impossible either because of the condition of the work (too fragile to handle, too large to perceive easily) or the distance between the student and the object was too great.

For many years image sets, like the Carnegie set, were skillfully developed by image producers or brokers who in cooperation with textbook publishers filled the needs of teachers and their students for inexpensive pictures or illustrations to supplement texts especially when color reproductions were costly and thus prohibitive (Freeman, 1990b). Fine arts image producers worked directly with museums and at historical sites. They negotiated rights and permissions with the owners or holders of the artworks and brought in specialized photography equipment to render these objects "in the best possible light." Image brokers purchased their images from independent photographers and then sold copies. Their products were typically high quality, well-documented color slides of artworks and architecture that were packaged and sold specifically for use in the classroom. Each company produced a catalog or distributed periodic notices regarding the availability of new materials. Some slides were sold only as sets while others were available individually. The latter were identified by the object or place illustrated along with other defining information such as the medium of the original object, its size, the date it was made, and where the illustrated object or site is located.

Among the best known image producers and brokers for the fine arts were and continue to be Saskia Ltd.Cultural Documentation (http://www.saskia.com/), Harthill Art Associates (St. Mary's, Ontario, Canada), Rosenthal Art Slides (a division of Davis Publications, Worcester, Massachusetts), Mini-Aids (Monterey, California) and Art on File (Seattle, Washington). Images could also be acquired directly from museums, archives, and libraries. These are marketed as slide sets or as individual images directly to schools, scholars, and publishers. Large and small institutions offer this service for reasonable prices. Producers and brokers of slides for the fine arts are listed and evaluated in the Slide Buyers' Guide (Cashman, 1990).

Once acquired for the school, the task of preserving and providing access to the slides was the next major task. Over the years, collections at colleges and universities grew exponentially. Some of the largest are also today's most distinguished: Harvard University, Princeton University, Bryn Mawr College, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan, to name but a few (Irvine, 1979). Each institution over time established a unique system for arranging the images acquired from these diverse sources and later an equally idiosyncratic method for making their catalog accessible to users (Freeman 1990a). Today classification systems are widely different, even though the fundamental goals are often the same.

2. IMAGE FINDING AIDS

Soon the need for resources that would enable librarians and scholars to locate new or additional images was recognized (Roberts, 1988). Three types of reference tools emerged: directories of sources, indexes to reproductions, and directories of collections and locations (Bunting, 1984, pp.5-8). The list of possible titles that function as finding aids for images is too large to enumerate, and yet sources of images are anything but extensive; instead they can be simultaneously summary, specific, elusive, and limited in scope. Each usually has its own focus and purpose but most lack breadth and depth to be considered comprehensive, and few actually included illustrations. Indexing illustrations, where to find pictures in previously published materials, is but one method to identify image sources. Since an image appearing in a publication is not suitable for reproduction or display, other avenues to the image were necessary. Furthermore, working through lists of titles of artworks reproduced elsewhere was extremely time-consuming when no one tool encompassed the whole and the sources where the illustration could be found might not be readily available to the searcher. Directories of collections or locations of image repositories were useful, but they represent yet another step in gathering data.

The explosion of interest in teaching the arts by the late 1960s and the need for slides for the classroom were recognized by the appearance of three new publications within a two-year period. These are Sources of Slides: The History of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970; 1973), The Slide Buyer's Guide (DeLaurier, 1972+), and A Handlist of Museum Sources for Slides and Photographs (Petrini and Bromberger, 1972). These books offered the most direct link between the need for teaching resources and the sources that could provide them.

a. Sources of Slides: The History of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970; 1973)

This 24-page booklet identified the major sources and vendors of slides relevant to the teaching of art at the time. Annotations identified each vendor's area of specialization or coverage. The major art museums of the world were also listed. The 1973 booklet was a revision by Donna C. Smidt and Doralynn Schlossman of the earlier publication.

b. The Slide Buyers' Guide (1972+)

First published in 1972 under the title A Slide Buyer's Guide, this book is now in its sixth edition (1990). Nancy DeLaurier, the former slide curator at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, assembled data from questionnaires for the first through fourth editions. The survey method followed that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Sources of Slides (acknowledged) but more data was ultimately provided. The Guide was the first attempt to evaluate quality and compare prices based on actual experiences of colleges purchasing from these sources. Other editions followed in 1974, 1976, and 1978.

The fifth and sixth editions of the Guide (1985 and 1990) were edited by Norine D. Cashman and published by Libraries Unlimited for the Visual Resources Association. In the sixth-edition's 308 entries, detailed information about the vendors and their practices are described. Included are scope, photography method, production, documentation, purchasing (prices and business practices), rental, other products, other sources, and evaluation. Name, subject-indexing, and cross-referencing made this one of the most useful resources for image users. Information describing individual objects or works of art is not provided. At this time, the Visual Resources Association is sponsoring the development of the seventh-revised edition.

c. A Handlist of Museum Sources for Slides and Photographs (Petrini and Bromberger, 1972)

Published in 1972 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Art Department, Slide Library, this guide contains the results of an ambitious survey sent to museums around the world. The questionnaire covered color slides and black-and-white photographs, their availability, cost, procedure for ordering, type of accompanying documentation, policy for further reproduction, and name of contact person. No index is provided.

Knowing where the work of art is maintained is required before any of these guides can be useful. If the collection where the work is held is not specified, then the search must continue elsewhere. If the place is known and the data about the object complete, one would be able to dispatch a letter to inquire about the availability of the reproduction of the work in question. A list of slides or reproductions was usually returned to the writer along with instructions for ordering these materials.

Even though museums try to maintain reasonable documentation for every artifact in their charge, not every piece will have been reproduced as a slide; many are only documented as black-and-white prints, large-format transparencies, or negatives. None of these guides included detailed lists of individual works; instead searchers were told if and how such lists could be obtained.

Acquiring images has been a task that could take substantial time and resources because adequate research and reference tools have been lacking. The multi-dimensional tool that was obviously required to perform cross-checking and linking of data is one that obviously had to wait until new technologies could offer both the medium and a cost-effective method for delivery. Enter computer technology, digital imaging, and electronic information delivery.

III. IMAGES PRESENT

In the 1990s, the introduction of affordable and easily produced digital images has eased many of the technical restraints associated with image use and as a result the need for images has greatly increased. Images appear everywhere, in places where we expect to find them as well as in new venues. The Web is a good example. "What good is a website without images" could be the mantra for the last years of the century. Similarly, a textbook without images - high quality color images - has little appeal to a generation that has only known color television and now digital imagery on the Web. With this profusion and accelerated interest, finding a number of images or even locating a specific image, often remains a daunting and time-consuming task. Access to images - for scholarly, professional, and classroom use - is anything but straightforward and the more images are used, the greater the task to provide access to them. The need for a reference tool for images is obvious, but the efforts to provide the same until now were generally less than satisfying. The reasons for developing the Image Directory as the image reference work for today's needs could on these grounds alone be easily justified.

A. THE IMAGE DIRECTORY

Introduced in October 1997, the Image Directory (http://www.imagedir.com) in its current iteration is an online catalog of information about art images - from paintings and sculpture to architecture, textiles, ethnographic objects, the decorative and applied arts, even toys, and much more. Through the Image Directory, users are able to search the holdings of museums and image repositories worldwide with the aid of vocabularies, timelines and eventually reference texts. It brings together data from diverse image sources into a single, easily searchable electronic format. Other formats, such as a print version, are also under consideration.

1. Inception

The concept of a directory of images was originally developed by this author for the "Initiative on Electronic Imaging and Information Standards," sponsored by the Getty Art History Information Program (now the Getty Information Institute), in Santa Monica, California, March 3-4, 1994, in the following statement:

Access to images of art needed for both research and teaching is hampered because we do not have a comprehensive reference tool for images equivalent to Books in Print. It is impossible to conduct serious research or to develop meaningful courses without knowing where to locate all types of images - photographs, transparencies, slides, as well as digital image files.

This was presented as an example of a "barrier to universal and comprehensive access to images and information on art, and submitted along with two other "barriers" prior to the meeting. Since each speaker was allowed to elaborate on only one "barrier," she chose to focus not on the "access barrier" but on another important issue, namely the absence of a statement of understanding or guidelines regarding copyright and the use of images.

2. Goals

The Image Directory, envisioned as the ultimate image reference tool, amalgamates the functions of the analog image resources -- the directories of sources, indexes to reproductions, and directories of collections and locations - and adds dynamic electronic features. The Image Directory strives to do what these and other guides and resources cannot - be authoritative, comprehensive and specific, providing item-level data along with easy links to and from the owners or providers of the images. The online tool bridges different, wholly independent cataloging and description methodologies into a single search and retrieval system. Image owners, the best sources for authoritative data about their collections, are the primary contributors of information and at the same time the gatekeepers for their images.

Standardized data fields allow viewers to search across diverse collections, bringing together records and images that would be otherwise difficult to locate. Because the issues of rights for reproduction and use of images often require negotiation, this information had to be readily accessible along with any data about an image, its available formats, and its source. Different uses would engender different costs and conditions. This information needed to be clearly stated in the record. While it would have been most desirable to include a thumbnail image in each record within the Image Directory, the image eventually was not a requirement for participation. The rich data submitted by the image owners could and would stand alone in some cases.

3. Data and Templates

The record core for each image record consists of 47 data fields. In determining how to interpret and field the data supplied by images owners and providers, three standards were compared and evaluated: MARC, the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) (Baca and Harpring, 1996), and the Visual Resources Association Core Record (McRae, 1997). These standards are recognized as important vehicles for resource sharing in the larger context of networked cultural heritage.

MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging) has not been as widely used in museums and archives as it has in libraries to store bibliographic data in an international data-communications format. Nevertheless since libraries would be contributing data to the Image Directory database, this format which provides a means for organizations to share cataloging information through its common structure for describing data, would have to be reconciled. Over the years archives and visual resources collections have experimented with MARC as well. Their pursuits and accomplishments are described by Gibbs and Stevens (1986) for the National Gallery of Art Photographic Archives, by Fink and Hennessey (1988) for the National Museum of American Art, by Abid, Lantz, Pearman, and Scheifele (1992) for the Slide and Photograph Collections at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and by Keefe (1990) for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Architecture Library's slide collection. Bower (1993) compared and analyzed documentation from 10 institutions either using or considering MARC for use with descriptions of visual resources or original art works to see how these efforts were proceeding and to share the findings with others in these communities.

The Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) (http://www.gii.getty.edu/cdwa/HOMEPAGE.HTM ) is the culmination of the study of the Art Information Task Force (AITF), underwritten by the Getty Art History Information Program, now the Getty Information Institute, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the College Art Association. The project, begun in 1990, sought to develop guidelines for describing works of art in the context of research and scholarship. The main purpose of the CDWA is to help formulate the content of art-related databases by defining the intellectual structure underlying the description of objects and images. As more institutions begin incorporating the CDWA guidelines into their collection management systems, the greater the need for strategies for sharing data systematically. The CDWA framework has been useful in developing the Image Directory fields and field tags.

VRA Core Record

The work of the Visual Resources Association in defining how the CDWA framework applies to photography documenting architecture and original art is embodied in the VRA Core Record (http://www.oberlin.edu/~art/vra/wc1.html). The aim of this project is to develop a core documentation standard that would lead to shared cataloging of image information in the future. The development of this and other standards such as the Dublin Core (http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core/ ) will be closely monitored for their significance for the Image Directory.

Perhaps the single-most important aspect of the Image Directory is that control over data remains with the image provider. When data is converted into the Image Directory template, the provider has an opportunity to review, correct, augment or delete it. The reason governing this practice is because cultural objects usually lack firm documentation or identification. When compared to the holdings in most libraries, cultural heritage objects lack one important feature: an equivalent to a book's title page. Traditionally, the responsibility for identifying or describing an object has been assumed by independent scholars who may or may not be affiliated with the repository where the object is maintained. As a result much of the information that relates to an object - attribution (authorship), title, date, meaning, and purpose - can be open to speculation and sometimes contradiction. On the other hand, the best, most authoritative and up-to-date information about the object should be found with the object, in the documentation maintained by the repository. The museum, archive, or library's -- the image owners or providers -- role in submitting data directly to the Image Directory is therefore significant in meeting the project's objectives and goals to be authoritative, comprehensive and specific.

4. Participation

Any individual or institution having images of value or interest to others is eligible to participate in the Image Directory. Initial invitations were sent to museums and repositories having a record of selling or marketing images based on listings in the Slide Buyers' Guide, 6th ed. Others were contacted later on the basis on their size, location, and specialization in art. The benefits outlined in the initial contact letter included 1) educational: providing useful information about their institutions and resources in a single, easily accessible reference tool; 2) scholarly: being able to establish authority over the data describing their holdings without third-party intervention or interpretation; and 3) commercial: making their images available to both scholarly and commercial purchasers or users in a business-like manner through software designed to ensure secure communications and transactions.

To fulfill one of its most important missions, namely its educational mandate, may be the best reason for a museum or repository to contribute data to the Image Directory. The American Association of Museums, in its 1992 report, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums, identifies 10 principles, and within these states that for museums education is "at the center of their public service roles." (http://www.aam-us.org/eenv.htm). Participation in projects such as the Image Directory whose main audience is the image researcher can be seen as contributing to this important goal.

On the other hand, the third factor, the commercial aspect, or the need to find new revenue streams, is the one found most frequently mentioned as the driving force in many of today's museums (McLean, 1995). The Image Directory furnishes a vehicle by which the sale or licensing of images by the image owner can be facilitated.

Image owners and providers can submit data in whatever format they currently have available. Academic Press has accepted data in a variety of media - from printed books to index cards, text-based tables, and electronic databases. When books are submitted, the data is scanned and then fielded into the Image Directory database. There is no charge for the data conversion service.

Images are an important part of the Image Directory but as mentioned earlier not a requirement. Some image owners have been reluctant to include images fearing that viewers will download copies. Others have submitted images that are watermarked or encrypted to discourage unauthorized use. For this reason only low-resolution (thumbnail) images are presented with the Image Directory data record.

No charges are levied for being included or participating in the Image Directory. Academic Press requires for no initial fee from image owners or providers, no minimum number of records, and no annual quotas for records added or revised. The open policy regarding data submission is intended to provide the right incentives for image owners and providers to ensure that participation will be steady and long-term. On the other hand, if participants should choose to withdraw from the Image Directory, there are no restrictions or penalties imposed.

5. Contracts and Licenses

The terms of the agreement between the Image Directory and an image owner are simple and straightforward. The use of image descriptions and low-resolution images (if provided) is non-exclusive and no copyright is claimed on the images. The agreement also covers record updates and modifications, use of materials provided by the image owner, and the conditions for terminating the agreement. Every effort is made to ensure that the terms of the contract are consistent with the goals and philosophy of the institution or individual providing data and images.

6. Querying the Database

Viewers at the Image Directory site are presented with two ways to find images: the first is a quick search and the second allows for a more complex, combined-field query. The quick query screen displays six criteria boxes while the detailed query presents twenty boxes. To assist users who need assistance choosing search terms or spelling options for artists' or architects' names, two Getty Information Institute tools are included: the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and the Union List of Artists Name.

The AAT (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/aat_browser/) is a comprehensive vocabulary of nearly 120,000 terms used for describing objects, textural materials, images, architecture and material culture from antiquity to the present. It facilitates the use of terminology associated with the analysis and discussion of cultural history, encompassing the natural and built environments, furnishings, equipment, and artifacts. It is a system based on hierarchies and facets. Seven main categories or facets are further subdivided into 33 hierarchies or subfacets. Many of the terms include "scope notes" that provide definitions or comments that help the user understand usage and application. This controlled vocabulary can be used either in the process of describing objects at the museum or repository, by choosing terms for inclusion in a collections management database, or by the end-user of this data, to build or refine query statements. Even with its predominantly Western bias, the AAT vocabulary also extends well beyond to other cultures.

The ULAN database (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/ulan_browser/ consists of over 200,000 entries representing more than l00,000 artists (or "creators"), architects, craftspeople, and others. Coverage ranges from the ancient world to the modern period. Name variations, biographical information and bibliographic sources are brought together in this dynamic reference tool.

Soon, a third and the most recently released Getty tool, the Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/tgn_browser/) will be added to the Image Directory search screen. TGN contains nearly 1 million place names representing approximately 900,000 places. The thesaurus is composed of names and related information contributed by several Getty projects, including the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), the Foundation for Documents of Architecture (FDA), the Getty Center Photo Study Collection (GCPS), and the Getty Information Institute's Vocabulary Program (VP). Plans are in place to expand the list of TGN contributors to include more than just Getty data.

Eventually the AAT, TGN, and ULAN resources will be more seamlessly integrated into the Image Directory query structure similar to the way they are being used at the Getty Information Institute's a.ka. database project site (http://www.gii.getty.edu/index/aka.html).

Another tool to be found at the Image Directory site is the "Times and Places" feature incorporating maps and timelines from Gardner's Art Through the Ages. Plans to integrate "Times and Places" more dynamically and interactively into the data are being developed.

7. Audiences and Access

At this time, Academic Press has identified two primary audiences for the Image Directory. The first, the university and research library community around the world, is the traditional user of Academic Press projects. Through its IDEAL project, for example, almost 200 journals are distributed on-line, as full-text retrievable files. The Image Directory will be another database that could be made available to subscribers or site-license purchasers.

The second audience includes anyone who uses images. This list ranges from publishers to television and film companies. Corporate art departments, producers, and agencies who typically purchase images from stock photography houses could have access to the Image Directory. The goal of the Image Directory is to help image "buyers" find the resources they need quickly and efficiently and depend on this tool as they do on other electronic image sources.

After a free-trial period that continues through early 1998, access will be available by site license, to individual users by subscription, or by a per-search or timed-usage fee.

B. THE IMAGE DIRECTORY IN CONTEXT

The ease of putting up a website and making information available for all to view has stimulated the countless resources that are now available on the Web. Individuals as well as institutions are now experimenting with this medium to see what gains can be realized and at what costs. Several other projects are noteworthy for their similarities to the Image Directory as well as their differences. Chief among these are Corbis, AMICO, and MDLC for their relationships both to museums and educational pursuits.

1. Corbis

Since 1989, Corbis, then known as Interactive Home Systems and later Continuum, has been working with museums to develop innovative uses for images. Corbis's mission is "to become the world's leading provider of visual content and services in the digital age." (http://www.corbis.com/com/about/). A leader in digital technology by virtue of its affiliation with Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation, Corbis is a broker of images, delivering high-quality images to its image-buying customers. The Corbis collection includes images from numerous world-class resources including the Bettmann Collection, LGI, and Starlight, in addition to great museums in Seattle, Philadelphia, Detroit, London, and Moscow, to name but a few. Participants sign a non-exclusive agreement that allows them to continue licensing their images to third parties, while Corbis has the right to use the images in their own products (Akiyama, 1997). Royalties resulting from image use are returned to the image owners, and advances are available to offset any costs incurred in preparing images for the Corbis archive.

2. AMICO

The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) was founded by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in 1997, with 23 museums representing AMICO's founding members. The brainchild of Maxwell Anderson, director of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, AMICO is a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to "build a shared library of digital documentation of their collections for licensing and distribution to the educational community" (http://www.amn.org/AMICO/AMICOinfo.html). The major North American art museums will be the target of this project.

At this time, museums are being invited to participate and to examine the project's "framework documents" available for public comment at AAMD's internet site, hosted by the Art Museum Network (AMN) (http://www.AMN.org). In the future, AMICO will also be marketing other products which may include indexing and retrieval tools. At this time, participants are engaged in a year-long testbed project to learn how universities are using digital teaching and reference tools which will enable participating museums to best meet the needs of their users. The consortium will be responsible for licensing the content of museums as a means of distributing museums' digital information to the educational community. The project will also enable museums to work together in defining license terms, to eliminate overhead costs of processing individual requests for single images, and to work towards standardizing digitizing and documentation procedures. Under this model, museums collaborating as vendors of digital images to the educational market mirror the efforts of libraries or library consortia with vendors of electronic information.

3. MDLC

The Museum Digital License Cooperative, Inc. (MDLC) is being developed by Geoffrey Samuels in cooperation with the American Association of Museums (AAM), Sun Microsystems, Cornell University, and the University of California at Berkeley (http://www.museumlicensing.org). Funding for this project is being sought from the private sector. This licensing project is open to all American museums, not just those specializing in art. Its first goal will be to develop an educational site license, but later it will expand its boundaries to include a commercial licensing arm. Because of the size of its constituency audience, its focus is being limited to the development of a digital library of images of nineteenth-century American culture. The notable benefit of this direction is the prospect of building on a critical mass of nineteenth-century American material already available in projects such as the Library of Congress American Memory (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/) and the Cornell-Michigan Making of America (http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/) initiatives. Another reason for choosing this timeframe is to minimize copyright problems, and the attendant rights and reproduction issues (Keshet, 1997).

Corbis, AMICO, and MDLC are not the only licensing initiatives to be recently developed, but they are by most accounts the most commonly discussed projects among museums and educational institutions at this time. Each embodies a noble purpose and goal and as such can be seen as for the benefit of their communities. As libraries elect to offer more electronic resources to their patrons, licensing, instead of purchasing materials, will be a significant factor affecting their budgets and buying power. The fact remains that decisions still have to be made concerning sources and availability - in this case sources of images what would be available to patrons, whether for selecting teaching resources, for identifying research materials, or choosing illustrations for use in publications. The Image Directory's goal - to provide access to information about images - rather than to the image itself, means that data from any of the image collections or consortia can be included as data in the Image Directory.

IV. OBSTACLES AND RESOLUTION

The time that has elapse between perceiving the need for an image equivalent to Books in Print and the realization of such services is explained by many factors. The first is technology or lack thereof, until now. Image data is dynamic and unwieldy. An object can be many things to different viewers and so too the data describing it. The research and writing that has accompanied these objects over several centuries, before and after the introduction of standards, such as naming conventions, spelling, and access to diverse information through indices and guides is dauntingly abundant. Automation allows the researcher to traverse data and to find remedies for variances and the absence of standards. Pseudonyms and variant names are collected by tools such as ULAN, and specialized vocabularies made manageable by thesauri like the AAT. Places in the world along with their names and political associations throughout history are documented in the just released TGN. What had been a simple two-dimensional playing field in the analog world is now a three-dimensional matrix in which information can be accessed from many different directions using numerous strategies.

The second factor affecting these developments is the cooperation and collaboration of museums, archives, and repositories. Collecting organizations, such as museums have lagged behind libraries in embracing technology in their collections management efforts. Each organization appears to proceed along a unique path even though their ultimate goal is to share data (Gross and Wilde, 1996; Jensen, 1997). In large organizations, each department or division might have its own unique system as well. Without a central system for managing information about the art or artifacts, institutions are sometimes reluctant to submit any data, claiming it to be incomplete or without proper verification. Funding issues are usually the primary reason driving technological delays along with the lack of adequate cataloging and documentation standards.

Today, many of these issues are being addressed in various initiatives, such as the Consortium for Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) (http://www.cimi.org/) -- sixteen organizations working to solve problems relating to the electronic interchange of museum information; Protecting Cultural Objects in the Global Information Society (http://www.gii.getty.edu/pco/index.html) - a project seeking to implement worldwide common documentation standards to help prevent the illicit movement of cultural objects; Census of Art and Architecture Known to the Renaissance (http://www.gii.getty.edu/giinew/index/census.html) -- multimedia database documenting the knowledge and study of antique art and architecture by Renaissance artists, architects, and scholars; and Distributed Database Initiative (http://www.gii.getty.edu/giinew/index/distdata.html) - a project to foster broader information access and contribution to digital research collections by the international cultural heritage community. The Getty Information Institute, an agency of the J. Paul Getty Trust has provided funding and support for many of these initiatives.

Finally, the question of what kinds of images should be distributed - format, quality, and medium - is fundamental. The delivery of digital images requires an understanding of this technology and its ramifications (Ester 1991 and 1994; Stam, 1997). At the same time the needs of the user - the student, teacher, scholar, and all other image consumers - must be recognized (Stam, 1984; Schmitt, 1988). Some museums question their ability to enter into commercial distribution of analog or digital images with limited resources and staff to handle requests; others find themselves concerned with ownership and rights issues that were never adequately explored when certain art and artifacts were acquired (Walsh, 1997).

The changing landscape occupied by today's classroom has brought about an understandable reexamination of the museum's role in supporting education and in dealing with the licensing of images rather than the sale of slides and photographs (Green, 1997). How much more could be expected to change before patterns can be understood and addressed with sufficient resources? To this end several "testbed" projects have been undertaken. One of the earliest, begun in 1995, to explore how museums can respond to the needs of images in higher education was MESL, the Museum Education Site Licensing project (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/mesl/home.html). A joint collaboration between the Getty Information Institute and MUSE Educational Media, this initiative involved seven collecting institutions and seven universities working together to define terms and conditions for the educational use of digitized museum images and related information (Trant, 1996).

Among museum organizations, the Museum Computer Network (MCN) (http://www.mcn.edu/) has contributed significantly to the advancement of automation and technology in museums. Through its conferences, workshops, and publications including Spectra, members learn about systems, resources and methodologies that are working or being developed to meet new challenges. The evolvement of the Image Directory has been guided by knowledge gained from programs and information sponsored by organizations such as MCN.

The Image Directory is anything but static and, by the very nature of both technology and emerging developments in information access, will continue to evolve and expand its parameters. Presently, over 80 museums, galleries, stock houses, and slide producers are contributing data. The participants include, for example, The Museum of Modern Art, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the George Eastman House, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the list grows weekly.

The Image Directory is a product of its time, depending as it does on the provision of data and the sustained interest among image owners and providers to create a perfect bridge between their images and the world at large. Time will also be the judge of its success. If the bridge is good, image seekers will find it and use it.

V. CONCLUSION

The vast wealth of images that comprises our artistic and cultural heritage certainly warrants the planning, expense, and energy associated with the image initiatives of the 1990s. With time, these new tools and services that now afford better access to images, their owners, and authorized distributors will be refined and even improved. In the end libraries and their patrons will find the quest for images much less a challenge and much more an easy and logical route to important and unique resources in the library.

REFERENCES:

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WEB REFERENCES (URLs)

Academic Press Image Directory (http://www.imagedir.com)

a.k.a. (http://www.gii.getty.edu/index/aka.html).

American Association of Museums. Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums (http://www.aam-us.org/eenv.htm)

AMICO (http://www.amn.org/AMICO/AMICOinfo.html)

Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/aat_browser/

Art Museum Network (AMN) (http://www.AMN.org)

Bettmann Archive (http://directory.compuserve.com/Forums/BETTMANN/Abstract.asp)

Bridgeman Art Library (http://www.bridgeman.co.uk/)

Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) (http://www.gii.getty.edu/cdwa/HOMEPAGE.HTM)

Consortium for Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) (http://www.cimi.org/)

Corbis (http://www.corbis.com/com/about/)

Cornell-Michigan Making of America (http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/)

Dublin Core (http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core/ )

Getty Information Institute. Census of Art and Architecture Known to the Renaissance (http://www.gii.getty.edu/giinew/index/census.html)

Getty Information Institute. Distributed Database Initiative (http://www.gii.getty.edu/giinew/index/distdata.html)

Getty Information Institute. Protecting Cultural Objects in the Global Information Society (http://www.gii.getty.edu/pco/index.html)

Green, D.L. (1997). Museums Collaborate in New Marketing Ventures for Digital Images. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/193/intro.html.

Hulton Deutsch Collection (http://www.u-net.com/hulton/about.html)

Library of Congress American Memory (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/)

Museum Computer Network (MCN) (http://www.mcn.edu/)

Museum Education Site Licensing project (MESL) (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/mesl/home.html)

Saskia Ltd.Cultural Documentation (http://www.saskia.com/)

Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/tgn_browser/)

"The Tribuna of the Uffizi," (illustrated at http://he.net/~mega/eng/egui/monu/uft.htm)

Union List of Artists Names (ULAN) (http://www.ahip.getty.edu/ulan_browser/

Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Arts in London (http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/wp/court.html)

VRA Core Record (http://www.oberlin.edu/~art/vra/wc1.html)