Creating and providing web access to a collection of historical New Zealand digital images

Abstract

This study takes a brief look at issues involved in creating and providing Web access to a collection of digital photographic images. Issues discussed are input scanning devices, outsourcing, image storage formats, image reproduction, preservation, economics, intellectual property and copyright, difficulties encountered with the retrieval of images, and metadata. Two sites on the Web that currently provide access to collections of digital images are evaluated. Each site uses a different methodology. Timeframes, setup by the New Zealand National Library, uses a separate proprietary stand-alone system whereas, the multimedia Catalogue, setup by the State Library of Victoria, integrates the collection into their existing bibliographic database. Although neither method stands out as obviously superior, from a retrieval viewpoint, the unified searching solution of the Multimedia Catalogue along with its ability to easily share data externally make it the preferred solution. Proposing the integrated approach to be superior, the study finishes up with some suggestions for improving the methodology of the Multimedia Catalogue. It makes a simple proposal for enhancing Web access to the image collection by using the HTML META tag and positioning the collection for the future by automatically extracting DC metadata from the MARC records and embedding it within the header of an automatically generated HTML file. Also included in this study are a plethora of Web resources related to the various topics, a list of further reading and a complete glossary of technical terms.