accessceramics.org  a digital image database,collaboratively sourcedusing flickr

“Manga” Ormolu by Brendan Tang

 Stephanie Beene Lewis & Clark College

VRA 2010Atlanta, GA

What I will cover

• Quick summary of the project

• Recent enhancements• Current model and

numbers

“Enlightened” by HsinYi Huang

The problem: Finding high quality images of contemporary ceramics

Many images out there, but:

• Quality is variable

• Little or no metadata

• Copyright issues

• Not suitable for educational or classroom use

• Juried image collection

• High quality images

• High quality metadata, search, and browse

• Copyright-free images

“Red Dot” by Ted Vogel

Wish list:

• Physical, in-house collection

• Budget money

• Hardware or software

“Preferred Transitions,” by Deborah Horrell

What we didn’t have:

• Faculty with national/international contacts

• Faculty/staff expertise in VR, ceramics, and digital collection-building

• Networking and collaboration opportunities

“Blessing 2 (Side View)” by Gabriel Parque

What we did have:

The Lewis & Clark accessCeramics Team

Dept. of Art:

Ted VogelAsst. Professor of ArtStudio Head, CeramicsCollection CuratorHead of 5-member Curatorial Board (jury)

Watzek Library:

Mark DahlAssoc. Director, Watzek LibraryProject Director

Stephanie BeeneVisual Resources Coordinator

Jeremy McWilliamsDigital Services Coordinator

Dean’s Office

Kelly DelfattiSponsored Research Officer

Miranda CostaSubmissions Coordinator

“Constant tapping-Bad Boys+Fibber” by Pattie Chalmers

Artists create free flickr accounts

Upload images to accessCeramics flickr group

flickr for image editing, upload, and storage

Back up images on LC distributed servers

Our Solution 1

3

2

Built our public interface:

Same content, different look

flickr site

Our site

Added customized cataloging interface: artists choose from list of terms or add their own, which are added to list

Artists assign licenses here

Browse options:

Lists with numbers

Tag clouds

Tabs

Adding content:The process

• Artist invited to submit

• Creates a flickr account

• Uploads images to flickr

• Goes to our interface• Adds metadata to images• Assigns licenses to images

• We accept images into our collection

• Images become live and metadata lives in our collection and on flickr

“Cinch” by Erin Furlmsky

Outside funding for:

• Logistics of recruiting artists

• Support for submissions

• Promoting the project

• NITLE and NEA Grants

“Flower Tree” by Matt Wedel

Recent Enhancements

Site re-design

Recent Enhancements

search

Recent Enhancements

Cooliris (formerly "piclens")

Recent EnhancementsTwitter auto-links news from uploads and Blog announcements

Recent Enhancements

Google map of artist locations

Recent EnhancementsInstructions in many languages… using Google Translate!

Chinese!

Russian!

The accessCeramics model?

Category Traditional accessCeramics

Content source Central Distributed

Content origin Analog Digital

Metadata creation Central Distributed

Licensing Restricted Creative Commons

DAM Software Industry specific Consumer Web 2.0

Audience Local Global

User Interface Canned Customized

Where we stand…

• Holding at 200 unique visitors a day, spike at 400 unique visitors at peak times

• #1 when you Google “contemporary ceramics,” #40 when just “ceramics”

• 178 artists from around the world

• 3,000 images