digital thinking: applying studies in the field

Digital Thinking: Applying Studies in the Field

Sarah GillisAssistant Registrar, Image ManagementWorcester Art Museum, MA

FRBR

DCC LIFECYCLE

What do I exactly do?

• Responsibilities:– Organizing and Maintaining the Photographic

Archive (physical and digital)– Database Administrator: Media and Data

Standards– Rights and Reproductions (External Requests)– Copyright (obtaining Non-Exclusive License)– Colour Management/Proofing for publications

Worcester Art Museum

• Collection: ~36,000 objects

• Encyclopedic Collection

• Almost 2/3 of collection digitized

• Produce nearly triple the amount of images in comparison to collection size

Digital Image Preservation Initiatives at the Worcester Art Museum

• Organization/Workflow

• Access/Restrictions

• Discovery

• Re-Access

Digital Access : Pre-Organization

• Three (3) servers: two relatively new, one really old.

• JPEGs, TIFFs and DNGs accessible to entire staff

• Backlog of over 7,000 images due to a under-staffed department

• Scattered organization presented threatening space issues in multiple servers

Digital Access : Post-Organization

• One (1) central image server that houses the TIFFs and DNGs

• JPEGs remain stored and mapped to the old server for now– Action plan in development for when server

needs to be replaced

• Access Restrictions then followed– Only two (2) other departments have read-only

TIFF access– NO ONE but the Image Manager and Head

Registrar have access to the DNGs

Digital Images - Reorganization

• TIFFs– Year Accessioned• Loans within year Loan began

• Installation Shots– Year of Exhibition (overlap years start

with earliest)• Name of Exhibition


• One (1) central image server that houses the TIFFs and DNGs

• JPEGs remain stored and mapped to the old server for now– Action plan in development for when server

needs to be replaced

• Access Restrictions then followed– Only two (2) other departments have read-only

TIFF access– NO ONE but the Image Manager and Head

Registrar have access to the DNGs


• LOCKSS• More cost efficient to invest in a RAID

external hard drive than back up/archive onto discs

• Now have an 8TB RAID LaCie external Hard Drive (IMLS grant funding)

• Hard drive came with program to back up image server

• Houses image archive

The T.A.R.D.I.S

Spreadsheets are backed up onto cloud storage through Wuala (program came with hard drive)

Now that we can locate the images…

• How do you differentiate between them based on file name?

• Old Method: ObjectNumber_anythingelse.jpg

• Not a bad file naming system, but can get muddled once multiple digital images are produced.

• Need to implement a more simple, yet distinctive organizational system.

DCC Curation Lifecycle Model


• Full Lifecycle Actions– Description– Community Watch– Preservation Planning– Curate/Preserve

• Sequential Actions– Essentially the outer ring and arrow off shoots

• Occasional Actions– Dispose– Reappraise– Migrate

Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Reference (FRBR)

• Acknowledges that materials (physical and digital) can be related to each other through various entities

• An art object located in a museum has been assigned its own unique identifier, i.e. the object number– Level of organization and description goes

beyond just the physical object

• Throughout the years multiple instances of photography of the object has occurred.

Breaking down FRBR…

Person

Breaking Down FRBR, cont’d…

I say, my good man, I believe I shall make a painting of a woman carrying a small child on a rocky New England shoreline in the middle of a Nor’Easter. It shall be known as The Gale.

Winslow Homer, American, 1863-1910

WORK:The Thought…

Note: The work is dependent on the person in order for it to be realized in an expression.


Person


Winslow Homer (American, 1863-1910), The Gale, 1883-1893, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 122.7 cm (30 1/4 x 48 5/16 in.)

Physical Painting:(Expression)


Winslow Homer (American, 1863-1910), The Gale, 1883-1893, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 122.7 cm (30 1/4 x 48 5/16 in.), Museum Purchase, 1916.48 (Object Number, Unique ID)



Person



Photographic Renderings:(Manifestation)

DP1578



Photographic Renderings:(Manifestation)

Physical Photo-Documentation

BWP123



Photographic Renderings:(Item)

Digitized Photo-Documentation (from parent physical)

D-BWP123


Person D-BWP123.tifD-BWP123.jpg




All of these hierarchies supports the original expression as conceptualized by Winslow Homer.

Filename Organization

• Thinking in FRBR terms…– Each visual instance of this one work of

art requires its own unique identifier, aside from the object number assigned to it

– Keep It Simple Stupid– Quick identifier (prefix) Numerical

sequence (suffix)

Filename OrganizationPrefix What is represents

DP Digital Photograph

DNG Digital Negative

SL Slide

BWP Black & White Print

NG Negative

GNG Glass Plate Negative

CR Color Reproduction (transparency)

XR X-Ray

CON Conservation Image

If this represents a physical image, the digitized rendition will share the shame filename, but with a ‘D-’ as an additional prefix to acknowledge that this is a digitized item.

Filename Organization

FRBR and TMS

Object Record

FRBR and TMS

Media Module

FRBR and TMS

Media Record

Embedded Metadata

• Visual Resources Association – VRA Metadata Panel (beta)

– VRA Import/Export Plug-in (Adobe Bridge)

– www.vraweb.org

http://www.vraweb.org/

Embedded Metadata: What to Embed?

Object Data Fields from TMS for Embedded Metadata (EM)

Classification Title Approximate date

Medium Measurements Credit Line

Object Number Description Gallery Location (if available)

Photography Copyright Artist (Agent)

Embedded Metadata: What to Embed?

Gallery Location Only

Embedded Metadata: How to Embed

• Select a folder created by staff photographer, which contains day’s work

• Create an Object Package in TMS containing all records related to photographer’s folder–Make sure that all records go in the

same order as the folder; critical for accurate embedding of metadata


• Export pre-existing metadata into spreadsheet (VRA Import/Export Tool)

• Export TMS metadata into an excel spreadsheet

• Carefully copy and paste TMS metadata into VRA import template spreadsheet (same spreadsheet from the first export)


• Once all metadata is entered, save excel spreadsheet as a tab delineated text file

• Import into images using the same Import/Export Tool

• Batch Rename images following pre-determined filename format (e.g DP1573)

Embedded Metadata

Now that was just Embedded Metadata…

• Aside from EM, also keep spreadsheets of archived batches

• Let me show you…

Effects of Reorganization

• Work is still not done• Not trying to promote a culture of

‘no’ but a culture of preservation– Protecting the digital integrity of born-

digital media is the future

• Causing a major shift in internal culture– Restrictions– New file naming system– Centralized Access

External Discovery: eMuseum

Digital Thinking…

That’s all folks…

Special Thanks to the support of:

digital thinking: applying studies in the field

Education

digital access

frbr person

access restrictions

art object

physical object

museum purchase

multiple digital images

contd person