ILS 603: Image Databases
Fall 1995 class
Instructor: Howard Besser, 764-3417, howardb@sils.umich.edu
Office hours: Friday 11-12, 403B West Engineering, and by appointment
Student Assistance: Wendy Burnett (wburnett@umich.edu)
Class meets: Fridays, 1:00-4:00, 409 West Engineering
Class homepage: http://www.sils.umich.edu/impact/Fall95/
class summary
Course Goals and Objectives
Course Description
Topics Covered
Assignments and Grading
Readings and Resources
Schedule
COURSE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:
Students will learn all the issues involved in creating databases of visual
materials. Though the course focuses on still continuous-tone image, students
will also learn about document imaging and multimedia databases. Students will
study how repositories of image material organize and provide access to that
material (both in automated and non-automated ways). They will gain experience
in the various aspects of image database construction (scanning, database
design, user interface design, cataloging, providing access). Students will
gain project management experience in designing their own image databases. And
students will create a product that will visually demonstrate what they have
learned.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course will explore the issues involved in managing visual information, particularly
in the creation of image databases. At the start of the term the class will undertake
a collaborative project (building an Image Database
of T-shirts) that will expose students to all major aspects of an Image Database.
Early in the semester groups of students will visit libraries, museums, archives,
and other repositories to examine how they currently manage collections of slides,
photographs, manuscripts, objects, and other visual materials. Many students will
continue to work with one of these repositories throughout the term, and will
construct a prototype image database for that repository as part of their final
class project.
We will look standards and procedures for describing and accessing
resources in electronic form in general, and visual resources in particular.
Students will be exposed to standards for description
of both objects and metadata
(MARC, Dublin Standard, AITF, VRA, etc.)
and for indexing (AAT, Nomenclature, MeSH, etc.),
and will examine the benefits of thesaurus structures, network gatherers, etc.
And the class will explore the problems posed by multimedia
information in a networked environment,
and the implications of client-server architecture.
After briefly reviewing existing computerized systems for managing collections
of images, the bulk of the class will be devoted to analysing the issues
involved in the design of image databases. We will look at issues of
standards, image capture, storage, display, networking, copyright, social
change, and overload. Students will gain hands-on experience working with
a variety of image databases, and will create their
own WorldWide Web-based image databases.
Students will also participate in the
Museum Education Site License Project.
as end-users and will closely monitor the internal workings and developments
in this project.
This is a hands-on course where students engage in a wide variety of activities.
It is also a class that relies heavily on collaboratory work,
and students will engage in cooperative projects with several groups during the course of the semester.
Students who are not self-motivated will have a difficult time in this course.
COURSE TOPICS:
Physical Description & Indexing -- systems to ensure consistent
terminology usage and access by both subject and form
- MARC VM, MARC AMC
- VRA Data Standards
- AITF (art & architecture)
- CIMI/CHIO
- ULAN (art)
- AAT (art & architecture)
- MeSH (medical)
- Nomenclature (history, anthropology, archeology)
- NAMID form and genre (films, videos)
Developed automated systems (a brief review of several existing systems and products)
- WWW resources
- Museum Informatics
- American Memory
- National Agricultural Library
- commercial image DB products
Forming Image DBs--issues that must be considered in planning image
databases
- Analog vs Digital question
- Capture issues
- heat
- cameras
- resolution
- dynamic range
- frame
- devices
- Storage issues
- optical media issues
- compression
- access time
- clustering
- Display issues
- resolution
- dynamic range
- devices
- consistency of color
- Networking issues
- sharing resources
- justifying costs
Copyright issues
Issues of increased use
Social issues
Standards Issues
Other advanced projects
- Videodiscs & CDs in Museum community
- Image document management
- Interactive Multimedia (Athena, Brown)
Geographic Systems
Conservation
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Most of the academic requirements for the course are covered in the section
below (Assignment and Grading). In addition, there will be a number of readings
assigned, some of which will be available from the library and others through the WWW.
Financial obligations for the course may include the purchase of a course
reader and paying for several
rolls of slide film. The total cost for the reader, film, and processing
should be in the $30-$50 range.
ASSIGNMENTS & GRADING:
There will be four major projects required for this course: an individual
paper, an individual project, a group report on a local media collection, and a
final group project. These are outlined below.
All written material must be turned in in HTML format.
Grading will be weighted as
follows:
- 20% Class participation
- 10% Group report on local image collection
- 15% individual paper
- 20% individual project
- 35% Final (group) project
A. CLASS PARTICIPATION: 20%
It is expected that students will regularly read items from the subject
bibliography, synthesize what they have learned from the readings, and use
this to contribute positively to class discussions. Class participation includes
the discussion and evaluation of image DB products,
as well as work on the Tshirt Image Database.
In groups of about 4 students you will visit an image collection in a local
archive, museum, library, or teaching environment and report back to the class
(in the form of a group 3 page paper and oral presentation). You will explain
the tools they use for organizing and providing access to their collection.
Pay particular attention to the procedures they follow for "bibliographic"
description and access, as well as to any computerized retrieval tools they
have already developed or are planning. This will lead us to a discussion of
the differences between how images are handled in these various types of
environments.
5 page research paper (+citations) on some topic we will cover in the class.
Ideally it should be a review of the set of issues involved in a single particular
area, relying extensively on readings from the subject
bibliography. Most students choose to write their individual paper as preliminary
work on their individual project. Paper topics include: image capture, storage,
networking, or display issues for computer-oriented students; indexing or physical
description issues for library-oriented students; or GIS systems or discipline-specific
issues for students in Environmental Design, Geography, or Anthropology. This
paper should not deal with the needs of any particular collection or system,
but rather should deal with more general issues and trade-offs.
Write a paper about a particular collection or design a very specific tool. Do
something very specific related to topics covered in class.
The project is usually a follow-up to the individual paper.
Students might choose to analyze the needs of a particular collection of visual materials,
or build a subject-oriented index to images on the WWW.
Computer-oriented students might want to design (or even
build) a system for removing scratches from photographs or restoring faded
slides, design a tool to track or evaluate the use of images on a WWW site,
or build some devices to make Quicktime VR easier to use.
Library-oriented students might want to compare a given thesaurus to other
indexing structures. Students could evaluate a given product for use in a
particular setting. This is not a report on issues or what others have done,
but is original.
In groups of three (ideally matching one student familiar with programming, one
student familiar with cataloging, and one student familiar with the discipline
of the collection) build an image database. For this you need to identify a
collection, determine its scope, develop a system for physical description,
determine access points, define necessary terminology, develop a database
structure, capture a sample set of at least 50 images, create at least 100 text
records, and place all these within some image database system.
It is likely that you will work with someone who manages that collection,
and it is mandatory that you obtain permission to electronically
reproduce images from that collection.
You must
present your project to the rest of the class at a scheduled time in one of the
last several class periods, and you must turn in written documentation of your
system along with your rationale for why you made all the decisions that you
made (such as why you captured images at a particular resolution, what storage
issues your system will eventually pose and how you plan to handle these,
etc.).
COURSE READINGS AND RESOURCES
Assignments:
- Introduction to Image Databases
- Image Database bibliography
- Recent image database research
and information
- Image sites on the Net
- Ethically questionable use of images on the Net
- University
of Virginia Rotunda Centennial Exhibition by Christie Stephenson and Edward
Gaynor
- Museum Computer Network
- The Chico
Project
- Beverly SILS project only available from umich.edu
- Information about Scanning
- Information about Image File Formats
- Paper on Image Compression -- A survey of compressed domain processing techniques, Brian Smith, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University
- Information about Copyright
- Sample version of Categories for the Description of Works of Art, by the Getty Art History Information Program (restricted access) description of CDWA
- Reconnecting Science and Humanities in Digital Libraries, Oct 19-21 1995 Symposium sponsored by Univ of Kentucky and British Library
- The
Digital Work of Art in an Age of Immaculate and Promiscuous Reproduction,
talk by Steve Dietz of Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art to ICHIM
'95 conference
- Prototype for Academic Press' Image Directory, extensive information about images available from a variety of owners
Technical Protection for Images
Information about Standards
Info for Building your own search engines for WWW DB
Sample Image DB applications incorporating automatic indexing, relevancy feedback, content-based retrieval
- IBM's Query By Image Content incorporating attributes for color percentages, color layout, and texture
- Virage demo incorporating attributes for color, composition, texture, and structure
- UC Berkeley's Cypress, an outgrowth of the Chabot Project
- Content-based searching of large-image databases, Mary Larsgaard, Alexandria Digital Library, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Content-based Multimedia Data Management and Efficient Remote Access, Brent Seales, James Griffioen, and Raj Yavatkar, Assistant Professors of Computer Science, University of Kentucky
- Image Content Searching is Here,
written by Vlad Wielbut for the Image Database class
Museum Education Site Licences Project documents
Other peoples' imaging documents
Document Images--Image Quality, Conservation, Long-Term Issues
- Benchmarking Image Quality: From Conservation to Presentation by Anne Kenney
- Preservation in the Digital Age: An annotated Bibliography by Jack Kessler (from CARL Conference, 10/21/95)
- Images: quantity is not always quality, Michael Lesk, Director, Computer Science Research Department, Bellcore Laboratories
- Preserving Digital Information, Report from the Task Force (Research Libraries Group & Commission on Preservation& Access)
- Digital preservation: a time bomb for Digital Libraries, Margaret Hedstrom, Associate Professor, School of Information and Library Studies, University of Michigan
- Guidelines for Special Collections contemplating putting images up on the WWW
- Electronic Beowulf Project, the British Library
- Papyrus Digitization Project, University of Michigan Library
COURSE SCHEDULE
Dates are subject to change. Highlighted assignments are due
on the date noted.
Italicized highlighted items are milestones
(students do not have to turn items in on these dates,
but will be behind if they are not completed by then).
DATE ACTIVITIES
9/8
- Introduction and course requirements
- What is an Image Database?
- Slide presentation on the features of various image database systems
- Demonstration of WWW Image Databases (user's perspective)
- Begin work on Tshirt Image DB
9/15
- Summary of Issues to be considered in planning Image DBs (I)
- Image Capture
- Analog vs. Digital
- Continue work on Tshirt Image DB
- Work groups on cataloging and vocabulary control of Tshirts
- Demonstration of scanners
- Discussion of course papers and projects
- Formation of groups for visit to image collection
9/21
9/22
- Summary of Issues to be considered in planning Image DBs (II)
- Storage Systems
- Optical Storage Systems
- Optical Digital Media
- Compression
- Finish reading Introduction to Image Databases
9/29
- Discussion of course papers and projects
- Summary of Issues to be considered in Planning Image DBs (III)
- Image Processing/Conservation
- Tshirt Image DB assignment due
(scanning & cataloging first 15 Tshirts)
10/6
- Group visit paper due (one paper per group)
- Presentations of Group visits
- Discussion of conceptual differences between libraries, museums, archives,
teaching collections
- Tshirt Image DB recommended:
(experiment with cleaning, compressing, & thumbnails)
10/13*
- Multimedia museum interactive systems
- Deadline for choosing a Final Group Project topic and members
- Individual Papers Due
- Tshirt Image DB recommended:
(scanning & cataloging second 15 Tshirts)
10/20
- Summary of Issues to be considered in Planning Image DBs (IV)
- Physical Description & Indexing
- Other Image DB software
- Deadline for list of fields for Final Group Project
- Tshirt Image DB assignment due
(cleaning, compressing, & thumbnails for first 15 Tshirts)
10/27
- Deadline for shooting slide film for Final Group Project
- Individual Projects Due
11/3
- Summary of Issues to be considered in Planning Image DBs (V)
- Networking
- User Interfaces
- Display
- Tshirt Image DB assignment due
(cleaning, compressing, & thumbnails for second 15 Tshirts)
- deadline for scanning and uploading Final Group Project images
- deadline for creating text information for Final Group Project
11/10
- Summary of Issues to be considered in Planning Image DBs (VI)
- Resolution and Dynamic Range to use
- Standards
- Geographic considerations
- Social Issues
- Videotape(s) of future-like systems (Knowledge Navigator)
11/17
- Summary of Issues to be considered in Planning Image DBs (VII)
- Planning
- Practice
- The Future
- Deadline for joining together all Final Group Project information
11/24 HOLIDAY
12/1
- Final Projects turned in
- ORAL REPORTS/PRESENTATIONS
12/8
- ORAL REPORTS/PRESENTATIONS
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Last updated
04/08/99