OxCLIC was an internally funded image management project concerned with the practical use of digital images in teaching within the University of Oxford, focusing on slide collections held by the Department of the History of Art and the faculties of Classics, Archaeology and Oriental Studies. The project completed in March 2007.
Contents
Introduction
Academics in all disciplines make extensive use of images in their teaching and research, typically this has been through the use of extensive slide collections that have been built up over many years. However, emerging technologies has brought about a gradual decline in the primacy of slide-based teaching in favour of digital resources. The Department of the History of Art houses one of the largest of Oxford's slide collections - approximately 170,000 35mm slides - which is further used by a multitude of departments and faculties across the University. The faculties of Classics, Archaeology and Oriental Studies have assorted collections that amount to a similar size.
As the Association of Art Historians asserts, many academics and institutions are forced to explore the possibilities of digitising their slide collections to enable their delivery through digital media rather than increasingly marginalised analogue counterparts. The OxCLIC project seeks to identify a working system that promotes the use of digital images in education. The project will explore components of a system for the digitisation (scanning analogue slides to create digital images), management (of images and accompanying metadata), search and retrieval across multiple collections, presentation in the classroom and submission and storage of digital images and metadata in a number of implementations distributed across departments.
A shorter and concise Acrobat.PDF overview of the project is available for download: attachment:OxCLIC_intro.pdf.
Project Goals
The project aims to enrich the visual resources available within the teaching process by promoting the conversion of existing teaching slide collections to digital form and making them available to the widest constituency within the University, and, potentially, outside the University.
- The resulting system will present a clear statement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright with all images.
The pilot project will seek to:
- Research suitable software systems for cataloguing and delivering digital image collections.
- Gather user requirements across departments.
- Select one or more suitable systems.
- Refine the chosen systems as necessary to fulfil local requirements.
- Install the developed systems (and any necessary hardware) in a series of departmental implementations (Archaeology, Chemistry, Classics, History of Art, Oriental Studies and OUCS).
- Establish guidelines through the definition of workflows for adding content to local systems at adequate quality and with useful metadata.
- Prepare local collections for inclusion in the system, including digitisation of existing slides as required.
Portfolio Cataloguing System
See the OxCLIC Portfolio page for notes on how to use and set-up the application for cataloguing, and to download a Portfolio template file with base metadata.
A 30-day trial (OS X or Win) of the cataloguing system, Extensis Portfolio 8, is available here - http://www.extensis.com/en/products/asset_management/
MDID Image Management Server
MDID is the pilot online image server application.
See OxCLIC_MDID for further resources, guides and tutorials on using MDID with the OxCLIC project.
The online manual and wiki for the Madison Digital Image Database (MDID) server is available here - http://mdid.org/mdidwiki/index.php A brief movie overview of the MDID software is here http://mdid.org/Papers/nmc2005/demo.htm
There is a test online MDID image server installed at OUCS (Email peter.robinson@oucs.ox.ac.uk for further details )
https://oxclic.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ - Access to this server is via normal Oxford WebAuth username and password.
Theoretical Case Studies and User requirements
- Constructing a collection
- Managing individual collections
- Adapting a collection for digital delivery
- Departmental needs for an image server
The case studies are outlined further here in OxCLIC_case_studies
Project Resources and documentation
Key Documents & Quickstart guides to the OxCLIC project
attachment:OxCLIC_intro.pdf - A short introductory document to the project as PDF
OxCLIC_overview_document - An overview to the project as single wiki page.
OxCLIC_revised_workflow_diagram - Visual overview of scanning and file names (workflow).
OxCLIC_expanded_workflow - Expanded workflow (step-by-step process).
OxCLIC_filenames - Draft file naming conventions.
OxCLIC_storage_requirements - Image file storage space requirements
OxCLIC_image_server_requirements - Typical Arts and humanities Image Server user requirements
A brief movie overview of the MDID software is here http://mdid.org/Papers/nmc2005/demo.htm
Metadata Schemes
Software systems
Extensis Portfolio Cataloguing software
Extensis Portfolio 8 details - Wiki Section devoted to Extensis Portfolio
Iview Cataloguing software
Microsoft iView MediaPro details - Wiki Section devoted to Microsoft iView MediaPro
MDID Image Server
MDID workflow - An Introduction and overview of placing image material in the MDID system
Full documentation for a System Administrator to run MDID at Oxford.
Importing images and the associated Portfolio catalogue into MDID as a new collection.
Project meetings
* OxCLIC_meetings - Details of project meetings.
Scanner Shoot-out
I have posted samples at http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/varia/scanning/ for information. It is encouraging that both scanners (Nikon Coolscan film scanner and Epson 4990 flatbed) produced very usable images from indifferent originals. [CC]
Further links
CLIC - http://clic.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ - Community-Led Image Collections project.
Extensis Portfolio Catalogue program - http://www.extensis.com/en/products/asset_management/ - Includes a 30 day trial for OS X or Win.
TASI - http://www.tasi.ac.uk/ - JISC Image advisory service; provides phone and e-mail support and has good FAQs on all areas.
Bugs
Any bugs found in !OxCLIC to be reported here.