Penn State's Visual Image User Study

Abstract

The Visual Image User Study (VIUS), an extensive needs assessment project at Penn State University, describes academic users of pictures and their perceptions. These findings outline the potential market for digital images and list the likely determinates of whether or not a system will be used. They also explain some key user requirements for teaching, independent learning, and collection management. The importance of picture collections maintained by individuals is underscored, as is the desire of users to easily mix pictures from their collections with those from databases and other sources. Two prototypical services were tested: an image database service and a more experimental peer-to-peer system named LionShare.

Digital libraries

“…Brute force approaches to these large collections (Cacheda, Plachouras, & Ounis, 2005) compete with methods to tease structure and genre out of scanned images of texts or full‐text documents, to increase precision in retrieval, to improve understanding of context, and to exploit linkages between elements of the structure of documents (Muehlberger, 2002; Rauber & Merkl, 2003). Distributed architectures and access using content‐based image retrieval (CBIR) (Tang, Avula, & Acton, 2004) are still attracting substantial research for massive image collections but these high‐tech solutions seem oddly less successful than allowing user annotation in collaborative workspaces (Pisciotta, Dooris, Frost, & Halm, 2005). Music, too, can be retrieved automatically with waveforms (Clausen, Kurth, Maller, & Ribbrock, 2004), but evidence suggests that organizations which take into account work processes might better support regular users (Notess, Riley, & Hemmasi, 2004).…”

“…Because environments in which users actually work must bring together content in various formats, the toolsets developed for post‐retrieval analysis, use, personalization, and collaboration are necessarily integrated. Image annotation and linking within environments also heavy in textual content have been a focus of several longer‐term undertakings that are now reporting success (Attig et al, 2004; Pisciotta et al, 2005; Thiel, Brocks, Dirsch‐Weigand, Everts, Frommholz, & Stein, 2005).…”

The Daily Image Information Needs and Seeking Behavior of Chinese Undergraduate Students

“…74 A file sharing system could also help students access more images. 75 Users could also benefit from more instruction to help them improve visual information literacy, especially if more attention is placed on the informationseeking and use components. 76 University libraries, including those in China, have traditionally provided information literacy instruction with regard to traditional media types such as newspaper, journal articles, and books, but instruction on specialized media types such as images and other multimedia are less common, except perhaps in specialized courses for specific types of students.…”

Image and multimedia resources in an academic environment: A qualitative study of students' experiences and literacy practices

“…A number of research projects investigate faculty use of images for teaching purposes (Green, ; Nitecki & Rando, ; Pisciotta, Dooris, Frost, & Halm, ; Schonfeld, ). These studies note the increasing availability of images on college campuses, as well as faculty interest and even enthusiasm for teaching with visual materials.…”

“…Pisciotta et al. () conduct a faculty‐needs assessment to better understand the use of pictures in higher education, while Schonfeld () compares the use of images on several campuses. Green () extends this research by conducting a comprehensive survey at 33 U.S. colleges and universities.…”