Aha, so you forgot your link, and I neglected to send my message to the list. Here's a copy to get the rest of them up to date since our URLs are so useful.
O.
On Oct 26, 2010, at 2:15 PM, Maxim Romanov wrote:
Thanks. I have already built mine, but it is anything but portable. Although this Liberator looks quite much like my first scanner. The only problem is that it is hardly suitable to digitizing delicate documents or manuscripts. BTW, my url somehow disappered from my message, it was http://www.diybookscanner.org/
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Orion Montoya gorion@gmail.com wrote: http://bkrpr.org/doku.php is a project to make a fairly compact book scanning machine for ~$300 including camera. It's not quite super-portable but it's pretty close.
On Oct 26, 2010, at 1:04 PM, Maxim Romanov wrote:
Dear Dot,
You should take a look at where people discuss and build different types of scanning/digitalizing machines, including portable ones meant to be used in archives. You can find some are really nice designs there, as well as software that people use to process those images.
Best regards, Maxim G. Romanov
Doctoral Student in Arabic & Islamic Studies Department of Near Eastern Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Dot Porter dot.porter@gmail.com wrote: Hello list,
Are there any best practices aimed at scholars who wish to take images of manuscripts "in the field", using their own equipment? I'm thinking particularly of very remote repositories, that would not have their own digitization equipment; for a scholar interested in imaging only one or two manuscripts it might not be reasonable to try to have a professional set-up (with special book-cradle, special lighting, etc.). However even in those circumstances it's important to maintain high quality both in imaging and in metadata. I know for a fact that there are people doing work like that, hopefully some of them are on this list. Has anyone actually taken the time to write up best practices, though?
And if not, perhaps we need some.
Thanks, Dot
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Hi,
a short technical afterthought on cameras.
As we assembled the field kit following Todd Rester's ideas, it turned out that the SLR camera on offer, Canon PowerShot G11, did not have the option of remote operating through a computer. This option was dropped (perhaps to be reserved for more expensive models).
The model you can control through a computer, and which downloads the pictures directly to the hard disk, is the older (and therefore cheaper) CANON EOS 1000D. We bought this, and it really works.
But anyone preparing to make photos in this way should consult a decent dealer or a photographer, and the internet. It's worth it --- you learn much in the process.
This obviously calls for a "best practice" guide somewhere...
Neven
Hi,
This can quite efficiently done without engaging control via PC. I am using two Canon 12 megapixel point-and-shoot cameras (SD 780). I am not convinced that you need a DSLR camera for this (they are way to expensive and do not necessarily provide a better image quality). I use them in combination with some software (http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/sdm/index.htm) that allows to use a usb switch to trigger both cameras at the same time (you get two pages - left and right - in the same instance and 12 megapixel is quite enough for up to A4 format). Thus, I end up with two flashcards holding left and right pages separately. There are programs which allow to renames images in batches (so, I rename all right images as XXXX-1 and left images as XXXX-2, where XXXX are automatically generated numbers). Then, copy them into one folder and they are automatically arranged. Then, for processing images I found an excellent freeware program, ScanTailor, that does a great job - most of it automatically - processing images into nice looking pages ( http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/), which then can be combined into a very nice looking PDF.
Maxim
2010/10/27 Neven Jovanović neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr
Hi,
a short technical afterthought on cameras.
As we assembled the field kit following Todd Rester's ideas, it turned out that the SLR camera on offer, Canon PowerShot G11, did not have the option of remote operating through a computer. This option was dropped (perhaps to be reserved for more expensive models).
The model you can control through a computer, and which downloads the pictures directly to the hard disk, is the older (and therefore cheaper) CANON EOS 1000D. We bought this, and it really works.
But anyone preparing to make photos in this way should consult a decent dealer or a photographer, and the internet. It's worth it --- you learn much in the process.
This obviously calls for a "best practice" guide somewhere...
Neven
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is also http://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanović neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is also http://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porter dot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanović neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is also http://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
The HumSlides project at KCL used Flickr as a platform, I believe. Isn't the digital image collection at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU doing something similar? I don't know anything about the technicalities of either project, but I suspect there are representatives of both on this list...
G
On 28/10/2010 16:06, Julia Finch wrote:
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porterdot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanovićneven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is alsohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
The technological aspects of such a repository wouldn't take a lot, but as Neven wrote the issue isn't technological, it's social and legal, at least for manuscripts. Personally I'd be amazed if libraries allowed it, not so much because of lost revenue and control (though that would be a factor), but more because they're concerned about quality of images. If we publish less-than-fully-professional images from a library, then the assumption tends to be that it was the library who took the photos and therefore the imperfections are their 'fault'. That assumption may not seem valid, but (from what I understand) it's a very big concern for them.
The legalities are extremely complicated, not just in terms of copyright in all the relevant countries but also contract law. You may or may not have copyright over your photo, but even if you do there was probably something in the fine print saying that one condition of bringing in a camera is that you can't distribute the photos that you take, and that condition will be legally binding. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it needs to be done carefully. Wikimedia Commons is an excellent example of how *not* to do it, in my opinion. There's some interesting discussion from the Max Planck Institute on the topic, including a possibly surprising level of openness from librarians, at least in principle. See http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature4.
Looking at the ICMA Flickr stream, in practice it appears to be entirely architectural (despite their heading), not manuscript art. By my understanding, the legalities of photographing architecture are *very* much simpler than paintings or books.
Again, I'm certainly not saying this isn't a good idea and worth trying, but we can't forget that the social aspect is very complicated indeed.
Peter
On 28 Oct 2010, at 16:15, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
The HumSlides project at KCL used Flickr as a platform, I believe. Isn't the digital image collection at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU doing something similar? I don't know anything about the technicalities of either project, but I suspect there are representatives of both on this list...
G
On 28/10/2010 16:06, Julia Finch wrote:
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porterdot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanovićneven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is alsohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Gabriel BODARD (Epigrapher, Digital Classicist, Pirate)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL Email: gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/ http://www.currentepigraphy.org/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Peter Stokes Centre for Computing in Humanities King's College London Room 210, 2nd Floor 26-29 Drury Lane London, WC2B 5RL Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2813 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
A special case is the Digital Historical Archive of Cologne where everybody is invited to share any kind of digital reproduction of items that are now destroyed or buried under the ruins of the archive, collapsed 3 March 2009: http://www.historischesarchivkoeln.de/index.php?id=&lang=en
Franz
-----Original Message----- From: dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca [mailto:dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca] On Behalf Of Peter Stokes Sent: 28 October 2010 16:43 To: Gabriel Bodard Cc: dm-l@uleth.ca Subject: Re: [dm-l] Best practices for "scholar's own" digitization?
The technological aspects of such a repository wouldn't take a lot, but as Neven wrote the issue isn't technological, it's social and legal, at least for manuscripts. Personally I'd be amazed if libraries allowed it, not so much because of lost revenue and control (though that would be a factor), but more because they're concerned about quality of images. If we publish less-than-fully-professional images from a library, then the assumption tends to be that it was the library who took the photos and therefore the imperfections are their 'fault'. That assumption may not seem valid, but (from what I understand) it's a very big concern for them.
The legalities are extremely complicated, not just in terms of copyright in all the relevant countries but also contract law. You may or may not have copyright over your photo, but even if you do there was probably something in the fine print saying that one condition of bringing in a camera is that you can't distribute the photos that you take, and that condition will be legally binding. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it needs to be done carefully. Wikimedia Commons is an excellent example of how *not* to do it, in my opinion. There's some interesting discussion from the Max Planck Institute on the topic, including a possibly surprising level of openness from librarians, at least in principle. See http://www.mpiwg- berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature4.
Looking at the ICMA Flickr stream, in practice it appears to be entirely architectural (despite their heading), not manuscript art. By my understanding, the legalities of photographing architecture are *very* much simpler than paintings or books.
Again, I'm certainly not saying this isn't a good idea and worth trying, but we can't forget that the social aspect is very complicated indeed.
Peter
On 28 Oct 2010, at 16:15, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
The HumSlides project at KCL used Flickr as a platform, I believe. Isn't the digital image collection at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU doing something similar? I don't know anything about the technicalities of either project, but I suspect there are representatives of both on this list...
G
On 28/10/2010 16:06, Julia Finch wrote:
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porterdot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanovićneven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is alsohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Gabriel BODARD (Epigrapher, Digital Classicist, Pirate)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL Email: gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/ http://www.currentepigraphy.org/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Peter Stokes Centre for Computing in Humanities King's College London Room 210, 2nd Floor 26-29 Drury Lane London, WC2B 5RL Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2813 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Peter is quite right. A famous decision, Corel v. Bridgeman Art Archive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.) found that a photograph of a two dimensional object could be copyrightable. The finding concerned reproductions of paintings, but the logic seems absolutely applicable to manuscripts. However, as he says: any recent images will very likely (if the library knows what it is doing) be restricted by contract law. So all kinds of questions come into play, about when the photoes were taken, who took them, whether there was any statement, etc etc etc.
By the way: some time ago I set up a mass digitization site, to try and gather support for a move towards high-volume digitization of medieval manuscripts. Go see http://www.canterburytalesproject.org/massdigit/ and there is a useful JISC mail list for this group. I wish I could say that this site made a huge difference, and mass digitization is sweeping the world. It is not.
Peter
On 28 Oct 2010, at 09:43, Peter Stokes wrote:
The technological aspects of such a repository wouldn't take a lot, but as Neven wrote the issue isn't technological, it's social and legal, at least for manuscripts. Personally I'd be amazed if libraries allowed it, not so much because of lost revenue and control (though that would be a factor), but more because they're concerned about quality of images. If we publish less-than-fully-professional images from a library, then the assumption tends to be that it was the library who took the photos and therefore the imperfections are their 'fault'. That assumption may not seem valid, but (from what I understand) it's a very big concern for them.
The legalities are extremely complicated, not just in terms of copyright in all the relevant countries but also contract law. You may or may not have copyright over your photo, but even if you do there was probably something in the fine print saying that one condition of bringing in a camera is that you can't distribute the photos that you take, and that condition will be legally binding. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it needs to be done carefully. Wikimedia Commons is an excellent example of how *not* to do it, in my opinion. There's some interesting discussion from the Max Planck Institute on the topic, including a possibly surprising level of openness from librarians, at least in principle. See http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature4.
Looking at the ICMA Flickr stream, in practice it appears to be entirely architectural (despite their heading), not manuscript art. By my understanding, the legalities of photographing architecture are *very* much simpler than paintings or books.
Again, I'm certainly not saying this isn't a good idea and worth trying, but we can't forget that the social aspect is very complicated indeed.
Peter
On 28 Oct 2010, at 16:15, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
The HumSlides project at KCL used Flickr as a platform, I believe. Isn't the digital image collection at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU doing something similar? I don't know anything about the technicalities of either project, but I suspect there are representatives of both on this list...
G
On 28/10/2010 16:06, Julia Finch wrote:
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porterdot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanovićneven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is alsohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Gabriel BODARD (Epigrapher, Digital Classicist, Pirate)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL Email: gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/ http://www.currentepigraphy.org/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Peter Stokes Centre for Computing in Humanities King's College London Room 210, 2nd Floor 26-29 Drury Lane London, WC2B 5RL Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2813 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Peter Robinson
Honorary Research Fellow, ITSEE, University of Birmingham, UK
fDepartment of English 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon SK S7N 5A5, Canada
On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 Peter Robinson P.M.Robinson@bham.ac.uk wrote:
- (*) text/plain ( ) text/html
Peter is quite right. A famous decision, Corel v. Bridgeman Art Archive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.) found that a photograph of a two dimensional object could be copyrightable.
At first glance the decision seems to be to the contrary:
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality.
Regards
JSB
(Reposted! left out a crucial 'not' in the second sentence...thanks Janusz Bień)
Peter is quite right. A famous decision, Corel v. Bridgeman Art Archive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.) found that a photograph of a two dimensional object could NOT be copyrightable. The finding concerned reproductions of paintings, but the logic seems absolutely applicable to manuscripts. However, as he says: any recent images will very likely (if the library knows what it is doing) be restricted by contract law. So all kinds of questions come into play, about when the photoes were taken, who took them, whether there was any statement, etc etc etc.
By the way: some time ago I set up a mass digitization site, to try and gather support for a move towards high-volume digitization of medieval manuscripts. Go see http://www.canterburytalesproject.org/massdigit/ and there is a useful JISC mail list for this group. I wish I could say that this site made a huge difference, and mass digitization is sweeping the world. It is not.
Peter
On 28 Oct 2010, at 09:43, Peter Stokes wrote:
The technological aspects of such a repository wouldn't take a lot, but as Neven wrote the issue isn't technological, it's social and legal, at least for manuscripts. Personally I'd be amazed if libraries allowed it, not so much because of lost revenue and control (though that would be a factor), but more because they're concerned about quality of images. If we publish less-than-fully-professional images from a library, then the assumption tends to be that it was the library who took the photos and therefore the imperfections are their 'fault'. That assumption may not seem valid, but (from what I understand) it's a very big concern for them.
The legalities are extremely complicated, not just in terms of copyright in all the relevant countries but also contract law. You may or may not have copyright over your photo, but even if you do there was probably something in the fine print saying that one condition of bringing in a camera is that you can't distribute the photos that you take, and that condition will be legally binding. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it needs to be done carefully. Wikimedia Commons is an excellent example of how *not* to do it, in my opinion. There's some interesting discussion from the Max Planck Institute on the topic, including a possibly surprising level of openness from librarians, at least in principle. See http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature4.
Looking at the ICMA Flickr stream, in practice it appears to be entirely architectural (despite their heading), not manuscript art. By my understanding, the legalities of photographing architecture are *very* much simpler than paintings or books.
Again, I'm certainly not saying this isn't a good idea and worth trying, but we can't forget that the social aspect is very complicated indeed.
Peter
On 28 Oct 2010, at 16:15, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
The HumSlides project at KCL used Flickr as a platform, I believe. Isn't the digital image collection at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU doing something similar? I don't know anything about the technicalities of either project, but I suspect there are representatives of both on this list...
G
On 28/10/2010 16:06, Julia Finch wrote:
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porterdot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanovićneven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is alsohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Gabriel BODARD (Epigrapher, Digital Classicist, Pirate)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL Email: gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/ http://www.currentepigraphy.org/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Peter Stokes Centre for Computing in Humanities King's College London Room 210, 2nd Floor 26-29 Drury Lane London, WC2B 5RL Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2813 Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Peter Robinson
Honorary Research Fellow, ITSEE, University of Birmingham, UK
fDepartment of English 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon SK S7N 5A5, Canada
The HumSlides project at King's migrated its image collection to Flickr when the license for the management system it was hosted on expired. The images were originally digitised from 35mm slides used for teaching and research in the Classics and BMGS depts. As much was legacy material with no clear provenance the College was not willing to make these openly available and so they are sitting there on Fickr in a password protected account.
Password protected = not used.
I plan to start another copyright free collection on Flickr when I can find the time. Could this be the start of a collaborative project?
Simon
On 28/10/2010 16:15, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
The HumSlides project at KCL used Flickr as a platform, I believe. Isn't the digital image collection at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU doing something similar? I don't know anything about the technicalities of either project, but I suspect there are representatives of both on this list...
G
On 28/10/2010 16:06, Julia Finch wrote:
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porterdot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanovićneven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is alsohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Forwarded on behalf of Julia Finch:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Julia Finch julia.finch@gmail.com Date: 2010/10/28 Subject: Re: [dm-l] Best practices for "scholar's own" digitization? To: Dot Porter dot.porter@gmail.com Cc: Neven Jovanović neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr, dm-l dm-l@uleth.ca
The International Center for Medieval Art is in the early testing phase of collecting and sharing personal images of medieval art and architecture, using Flickr:
http://medievalart.org/?page_id=185
I haven't checked in with this project for some time, so I don't know whether it has been successful or not...
2010/10/28 Dot Porter dot.porter@gmail.com:
Thanks to Fred, and to Neven for following up on his point.
I would love to see an open repository of scholar-created images. I don't think it would require very much - an agreed-upon Flickr tag would do it, wouldn't it? Of course this would require that images be uploaded into Flickr, and there may be some with reservations about that. But there is something to be said for offloading storage costs onto someone else (and we would get the additional benefit of being part of a much larger digital repository, think of the possibilities for cross-searching and for finding other manuscripts that aren't part of "our" collection). I do say that as someone who has not used Flickr very much and perhaps this is obvious. I would love to hear from others on the list with more experience - how would Flickr work for an intiative such as this, and would it really be as simple as I think it would be (the social aspect Fred mentions - that would be, getting everyone to use the same tag - is a somewhat different matter).
I should also say, belatedly, that I'm immensely grateful for the responses to my query and for the great discussion coming out of those responses.
Thanks,
Dot
2010/10/28 Neven Jovanović neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr:
Fred Gibbs touched an important topic:
"how to create and utilize an open access image repository (perhaps more of a social challenge than a technical one) rather than the logistics of producing images in the first place. Though by no means do I mean to minimize the challenges of digitization. Indeed, the discussion of how to meet the threshold of utility in image creation is a crucial first step. But a larger (and somewhat utopian) vision of manuscript image access, even with a latitude of image quality, is perhaps worth bearing in mind as best practices are worked out."
One question is: what do we need the images for? Another question is: are we allowed to share the images?
Fred's vision is not only beautiful, it is something that comes naturally to researchers. The libraries, however, have different priorities, especially as regards sharing of their material (or images thereof). To put manuscript images in a repository, I have to ask for permission the library or the archive whose manuscript I photographed; at this point the institutions usually get uncomfortable, for all kinds of reasons; and if I do something without permission, I'll be in trouble next time I have to visit that place. Yes, I know that a public institution *should* allow the public to make its treasures public, but I also know that it's, well, complicated.
We are discussing open data here. The data should be open, and we could all do much, much more with a shared repository for our manuscript images. But such a repository would at the moment have to function in a guerilla way (I know of such repositories for Southern Slavic history, for example; a nice approach is also http://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/, for printed matter).
What do others think? Would such a repository be possible? Does it exist somewhere outside of institutional digitizing projects?
Yours,
Neven
Zagreb, Hrvatska / Croatia
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-- *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Dot Porter (MA, MSLS) Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian Email: dot.porter@gmail.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
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