Image handling for museums and libraries: report of a conference

Abstract

The British Library Research and Development Department (BLR &DD) has long been interested in the developing technologies in the fields of imaging and multimedia, and in 1988 published An overview of image processing and image management systems and their application. This report reviewed several fields where these technologies were already being used and also highlighted the future trends for the industry and standards. Since then imaging and multi‐media projects with relevance to the library and information world have featured as a priority area in the allocation of the Department's funds. It is therefore not surprising that this year's Anglo‐French seminar (24–26 June), the eighth in a series of annual seminars aimed at bringing researchers together to discuss ongoing work on topics of common interest, had image handling in museums and libraries as its theme.

Image databases for multimedia projects

“…Another Italian initiative has adopted a similar approach in the particular context of astronomical image data (Bordogna, Carrara, Gagliardi, Merelli, Mussio, Naldi, & Padula, 1990). An extension has been proposed to the automatic feature extraction work undertaken by Stonham, mentioned above, which would seek to effect automatic, content-based retrieval of images in response to textual queries (Stubley, 1990;Enser, 199 1).…”

“…Its 1990 annual Anglo-French seminar was devoted to image handling for museums and libraries, and active researchers in the field were invited to present position papers which covered a broad spectrum of image retrieval applications. A review may be found in Stubley (1990). In addition, the Department organized an international research conference on multimedia information in 199 1, and published the proceedings (Feeney & Day,199 1).…”

“…A number of recent conferences and reviews attest to the mounting enthusiasm with which the heritage management community and other organisations have greeted the resulting opportunities to add value to their holdings of still and moving images (Commission of the European Communities, 1988;Feeney & Day, 199 1;Feeney & Ross, 1993;Hoffos, 1992;Maurer & Williams, 199 1;Oberhauser, 1990;Petrie, 1988;Stubley, 1990). The exploitation of these opportunities demands more than high-performance storage and transmission facilities, however, and there is a growing perception of the need to address the difficult system design issues involved in visual information retrieval.…”