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MILEMILEMMETADATA ETADATA IIMAGE MAGE LLIBRARY IBRARY EEXPLOITATIONXPLOITATION

T H E B R I D G E M A N A R T L I B R A R Y [email protected]

LOST IN STANDARDS

WORD and IMAGE / Metadata Classification Seminar / Vienna, 23rd August 2007

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Standards are:A set of rules for ensuring quality. Usually standards are defined for products, deliverables or deliverable components and processes. http://uis.georgetown.edu/departments/eets/dw/GLOSSARY0816.html#S

Metadata are: Metadata are data about data, or more precise information (data) about a particular content (data).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata

CHT 263029 Poster, Belgian, ca 1936

• That metadata in connection with images have a particular importance is obvious, because the info is either hidden in the image itself as visual information (the image content) and needs to be verbalised or it is additional info in connection with the image.

• So we have a strong relationship between word and image in our business in order to provide the necessary info. We have to “break down” this information, it has to be organized in thematical groups to assure comparibility and retrieval – classifications!


Paul King‘s PPT-Presentation at Florence, 4th June 07, p.6 (c) Paul King

Example of break down the image in its constituent parts:


To define classification is more difficult. If I look in Wikipedia or the web I get quite a lot of definitions:

Evidently classification has something to do with classes, concepts and categories and the precise definitions is something for philosophers, linguists or other very abstract thinking people, but even the IT-Community doesn’t use these terms in a consistent way.

So when I use the word “classification” in the following minutes, I mean the organisation of metadata in certain categories (even when this perhaps means in reality classes, properties ….)

Using categories means to organise the metadata in a consistent way. When I want to exchange my categories with somebody else, I need a kind of convention or rules that I and my exchange partner have to observe to assure interoperability – the standards.


Standards assure interoperability and make data exchange easy

In an ideal world all use the same standard but in reality it is quite different as was pointed out in the last MILE meeting in Florence.

STC 64805 Changing a Tyre, photograph by Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986)


George Kordelis‘PPT-Presentation at Florence, 4th June 07, p.4 (c) George Kordelis

To quote Georges Kordelis: The reality is:



And he demonstrated the diversity of standards in an impressive way by listing only some of them:

Not mentioned here are the IPTC headers and codes, another important standard which can’t be neglected by picture libraries ….

The CIDOC Handbook has 93 pages,

the RDA ( Resource Description and Access) Draft of Part A , Chapters 6-7 alone 43 pages.

The IPTC Photo Metadata Whitebook 27 pages


The CDWA (Categories for Description of Work of Art) offers even a concordance between different standards


HELP!!!!

I‘m feeling

LOST IN STANDARDS

BAL 7067 Mad Kate by Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), 1806-07, Goethe Museum Frankfurt/M.

Picture libraries don’t exchange their metadata only with one or a few organisations, but with thousands very different partners: with images suppliers who contribute images, with partner agencies and with clients who use the images.

Before reading all these standards I thought it might be easier in a first step to gather all information which picture agencies, specialised in art and history, need to organize in categories to administrate the rights and to describe the images, broken up in separate fields (metadata properties).

Draft of Categories for cataloguing images in picture agencies focussed on art and history

Adminstrative and rights metadata - ID number automatically given - ID number of the image supplier (link to image supplier file)including - Permission and/or restriction info (- usage - territories - partners)(should come automatically up with the ID of the image supplier but has to be editable) -Photo credit (should come up automatically with the ID of the image supplier but has to be editable) Further photo credit (link to credit file ?)

Master supplied : Ecta Slide print High res file only


ART

OR

ILLUSTRATION ?

1:CHT173748 , 2.XZL148154,3. PER205399 , 4. PER206012 , 5. CHT167891 6. XTD79043 , 7. XJL 158467

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Descriptive Metadata

photo Illustration Photographed object/artefact

Colour b & w horizontal vertical

Why a special field for photographed object/artefact?

Clients differenciate often between photographed and painted objects / artefacts.

Why illustration and not art?

ca 8o% of the users of commercial picture libraries search for images which express / illustrate a certain message. The message has the priority, not style, period or artist.

Photo


or

Illustration ?

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Info about the art work- Creator (photographer, architect, sculptor, painter etc. (link to the creator file)- Studio of (after, school of, attr. to, follower of, and workshop) Further creator (link to the creator file)

- Produced by (Painted by, Designed by, Sculptured by, Casted by, Engraved by, Printed by, Published by, Sketched by)

- Artist’s copyrights (should come up automatically with the ID of the creator file but has to be editable)

- Copyright holder (should come up automatically with the ID of the creator file but has to be editable)

- Nationality / culture (comes up automatically with the creator but has to be editable) Further nationality/culture (link to nationality/culture file)

-Work type (link to the work type file)

- Material and Techniques (link to material & techniques file)

- Dimensions in cm Further dimensions in cm

- Earliest creation date Latest creation dateor- Estimated earliest creation date Estimated latest date

- Style / period/ movement (link to the style/period/ mouvement file) Further style / period /movement (link to style/period/ movement file)

- Location where the art work is located (link to the collection line)

- Title / Headline of the image (free text)

- Description / additional info (free text)

Info about the content of the image:

Earliest date of the event presented Latest date of the event presented

Estimated earliest date of the event Estimated latest date of the event

Example: The Battle of Bouvines 1214


Date of Event: 1214

Date of Production: 1914

≠


Anne-Marie de Bourbon (2 Oct 1666 Vincennes – 3 May 1739 Paris), after Pierre Mignard II (1640-1725), ca 1790. PFA 89428

Louis XIV of France (1638-1715) XIR59867

Baume Le Blanc, Françoise Louise, Duchesse de la Vallière (1644-1710)XIR177462

RELETAD

T O

- Personality represented on the image (link to personality file)

Full data (precise date of birth and death including place of birth and death) when it is a portraitShort data (only year of birth and death) when it is a scene Further personality (link to personality file)

- Location presented on the image (link to location file)

Further location presented on the image (link to location file)

- Related to (link to Personality Location file)


Thames Tunnel STC 230281

Instruments of Isambard Kingdom Brunel BAL 1670

Freight shed at Bristol BAL 3389

Great Western BAG 12139

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) STC 64675

Question: What have all these images in common?

Answer: They are related to Isambard Kingdom Brunel


The question till which extend image content should be keyworded depends on the Weltanschauung of the keyworder

My personal philosophy is that all items and scenes should be keyworded which can be used as a detail

Description of image content by using Controlled vocabulary terms (link to thesaurus)

How to exchange these metadata?Actually we can only exchange this whole complex of metadata by sending additional info files, It might be difficult to embed this info in the digital image in a way, that other systems can read out, broken up in categories.

Due to the broad use of Adobe photoshop by professional image users the IPTC headers have a normative impact. These IPTC headers were originally created for the needs of newspapers and magazines, institutions which have a huge daily flow rate of images which aren’t meant to be filed and to be retrieved for other purposes. They were meant for one usage and should only provide the absolute necessary info about rights and content of the image. Info was restricted, too, by the length of the fields. For example only 64 characters were possible in the keyword field.


The new photoshop technology XMP (eXtensible Metadata platform) allows now more info but isn’t at all satisfying for the needs of picture agencies focussed on art and history

In June 2007 IPTC published the “Photo Metadata White paper 2007”, which proposes some improvements for the descriptive metadata properties like special fields for location in picture, person in picture and organisation in picture. If the art image libraries really need extra metadata properties for additional info about the age and ethnicity of the model in the photograph, emotions and predominant coulours, or if these info could be included in the keywords, could be discussed, but not here and now. More convincing are the proposed improvements in the rights management metadata, but this has nothing to do with the subject of this seminar “Word and image”.

These restricted facilities to export / import embedded metadata properties in images lead to quite unsatisfying results when one joins portals where images by different suppliers are offered.

Here only the least common denominator can be taken and this is for commercial photo platforms usually the IPTC header.

You then need to add all additional info in the description field. And as one can’t be sure that the user reads pages 2-4 of the IPTC Header the tendency is to put all relevant information in the decription field.

Below an example: Title, photographer, photocredit, keywords, all packed into the caption field


Cataloguing metadata of images ( here of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Bridgeman Art Library London, 15th August 2007)

Photo: Steffen Wedepohl

Once mixed together, the different metadata can’t get separated any more and can’t get mapped between different applications in an automated way, so we come back to the this situation:

Standards: I personally don’t believe that up to now a useful metadata standard exists for commercial picture libraries focussed on art and history. There is only a small amount of agencies which serve this niche in the whole range of agencies and each one is still struggling on its own to find the best practise. Our needs are quite different from the need of celebrity or travel photo agencies, so we shouldn’t look too much like a mesmerized rabbit at the development of the IPTC metadata properties.

Of course we should not use a very different version of our metadata embedded in the image, to assure that at least the basic info like agency name, artist’s name, image title and location don’t get lost. This IPTC header can only be a derived form of a more diversified metadata scheme with a broad range of categories, which informs the user in a clear structured way about the image content. This scheme could be displayed on the website and be distributed together with the images as tab separated documents to our users – and to our partners. Here is still space for improvements for nearly all agencies


Basic info in the IPTC-Header

Detailed structered info on the website

CHT 211395 Advertisement for ‚Adipolysine'2, c.1935

We have to assure a certain academic standard to profile our niche product (and to justify our pricing) but shouldn’t have the ambition to be academic institutions ourselves.

This is the job of our image suppliers – for example the museums - to provide us with the necessary info, and it would be great if the museums could deliver this info in a structured way, that means that a mapping of information from the sender’s application to the recipient’s application is possible and can therefore be automated.


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