Search results

This keynote paper considers each of the three facets included in the title of the conference: continuity, culture and competition. Each facet, it is argued, challenges the academic community in library and information science (LIS) to retreat from a narrow view of knowledge transfer in society founded on textual documentation as the channel of communication, and libraries as the means of gaining access to such documentation. The case against continuity in the design and teaching of LIS curricula is made by forecasting the likely socioeconomic context of information resource management in 2005. The widening availability of digitally‐integrated cultural artefacts signals the need for a convergence of librarianship with professional activity within other forms of memory institution. Competition from the subject discipline of computer science to provide the knowledge and skills deemed most appropriate for the information professional of the future suggests that LIS academics should collaborate, rather than compete within their community, the better to present a strongly unified discipline provision as the basis for a convergence of interests and influence with information system developers.

The Science & Society Picture Library — responsible for a very large archive of still images drawn from many different collections — is presently confronting the challenge of developing an integrated cataloguing and indexing strategy by which metadata construction can proceed, and which will provide potential users with effective and standardised subject access to the many components of its holdings.

To provide a better‐informed view of the extent of the semantic gap in image retrieval, and the limited potential for bridging it offered by current semantic image retrieval techniques.

Within an ongoing project, a broad spectrum of operational image retrieval activity has been surveyed, and, from a number of collaborating institutions, a test collection assembled which comprises user requests, the images selected in response to those requests, and their associated metadata. This has provided the evidence base upon which to make informed observations on the efficacy of cutting‐edge automatic annotation techniques which seek to integrate the text‐based and content‐based image retrieval paradigms.

Evidence from the real‐world practice of image retrieval highlights the existence of a generic‐specific continuum of object identification, and the incidence of temporal, spatial, significance and abstract concept facets, manifest in textual indexing and real‐query scenarios but often having no directly visible presence in an image. These factors combine to limit the functionality of current semantic image retrieval techniques, which interpret only visible features at the generic extremity of the generic‐specific continuum.

The project is concerned with the traditional image retrieval environment in which retrieval transactions are conducted on still images which form part of managed collections. The possibilities offered by ontological support for adding functionality to automatic annotation techniques are considered.

The paper offers fresh insights into the challenge of migrating content‐based image retrieval from the laboratory to the operational environment, informed by newly‐assembled, comprehensive, live data.

Organisations responsible for the maintenance of photographic archives are showing a developing interest in the creation of compact disc digital catalogues. These are perceived as a means of providing a ‘shop window’ to their collections, and a facility whereby their clients can order pictures directly without recourse to request mediation by a picture researcher or librarian. The Hulton Deutsch Collection's pioneering approach to this new dimension in picture library operation is described, with particular reference to those policies on indexing and interface design by which that approach was guided. Brief consideration is given to the extension of such desktop browsing facilities into the arena of high‐resolution electronic image delivery.

The purpose of this research is to describe the development of an indexing template to guide the indexing of images using keywords. The template is designed to be used for indexing the image collection held at The Children's Society.

A facet matrix based on analysis of existing studies was used to identify the most popular user query facets from user studies in the literature. A total of 33 archivists were surveyed regarding indexing practice and indexing wish‐lists. The results of these investigative activities were synthesised to produce an indexing template.

The results of this study suggest that indexing general entities and activities could be more comprehensive than is currently the case. A practical indexing template is proposed for organisations wishing to index image collections.

This article reports a project undertaken on behalf of The Children's Society to design an image indexing system for use with their photographic collection. Its method of enquiry is based on an application and interpretation of the Shatford‐Ensor matrix.