Issues with the Digitization of
Visual Art Resources, Special Collections
Final Paper for LIBR 256-12
San JoseStateUniversity
By Kristi Mansolf
May 9, 2007
Abstract
Due to the ever expanding nature of the World Wide Web, the wide usage of the
internet for obtaining information, education, research and recreation, and the need for
institutions in the library and archival profession to keep pace with technological
innovations to remain relevant, many leaders in the field have been working to extend
their holdings to the internet. The process of converting real objects to digital forms and
allowing widespread distribution of materials previously available only in a library or
museum setting is a complex one, involving issues that are an extension of those
typically addressed in an archival setting, that now must be addressed in the new virtual
framework that is being created. Visual resources and visual art resources are included
in the information that is being digitized and disseminated. Several institutions have
visual art resource collections available on their Web site. Some provide links to other
institutions with resource collections, creating a large, virtual,visual art museum. To
date, uniform technical standards, usage standards and policies have not been created or
adopted in this field. However, many universities, colleges, museums, libraries, and
interested groups and organizations are working with the digitization of visual art
resources and the issues that accompany this field, often collaboratively, to identify
problems and work toward resolution of the issues. This paper discusses some of the
concerns regarding digitizing visual resources, and considers the work of some of the
leaders in this field.
Introduction
Institutions that have in their care archives and manuscripts have recently been
faced with the challenge of digitizing collections and making them available over the
internet. Whereas previously an archival reference experience would potentially begin at
the time a researcher meets with an archivist and develops a strategy for conducting
her research at a repository with a special collections librarian, now a new phase of
reference has commenced and anyone, anywhere can access a growing number of
online collections, often at no cost on the ever expanding internet.. Materials in many
diverse mediums are being digitized to facilitate this process. Manuscripts, letters,
invoices, paintings, maps, sculptures, slides, film and video, are just some examples of
the types of materials being converted to digital form. There are also electronic materials
that are created digitally, but have to be converted or migrated at some point to maintain
their longevity and usefulness. Visual art resources that have existed for thousands of
years are also being digitized. Entities such as colleges and universities, museums, the
government and historical societies are providing access to at least a portion of their
visual arts resource holdings over the internet. As this new technology/economy
emerges, there is the need for more people in the workforce who specialize not only in
the digitization process of images, but are knowledgeable on how to best preserve the
context of the content of the images and the events that surround the environment in
which the images were created. There is also the need for specialists knowledgeable
about how to organize, catalog, store and retrieve the digital works. This paper explores
the unique concerns and issues that apply to digitizing visual arts resources and visual
resources.
Background
In order to understand the context in which digitization is being addressed, one
must consider who is digitizing their collections, what types of projects are
underway, and why objects are being digitized. The Digital Visual Resources Task Force
to the Systemwide Operations Planning Advisory Group, University of California
Libraries, in their report dated June 10, 2003 and revised August 26, 2003, defines
“image” as “a visible representation that serves as a surrogate for an original work. It can
exist in photomechanical, photographic and digital formats. An image is a reproduction
of the work and is typically a slide, photograph or digital graphic file.”1 Visual resource
image collections are those that produce, conserve, classify and make analog and digital
images accessible such as slide and photographic collections. Digital images can be
either created digitally or are scanned representations of the objects. For both modes the
surrogate takes on the form of pixels, or picture elements. Each pixel represents a spatial
characteristic and has a numeric value, a string of binary numbers, that indicates shades
and/or colors.
For the purposes of this paper, visual resources and visual art resources are used
synonymously. Although visual art resources refers more specifically to objects of art,
which could including paintings, drawings, photographs, film and/or video, sculpture
and/or ceramic, there is a fine line between what makes an image a work of art or an
artfully done image. This type of appraisal will not be addressed in this paper. Visual
resources refers more broadly to encompass the above art forms either in a fine art
______
1 Leslie Abrams, Howard Batchelor, Christine Bunting, Larry Carver, Laine Farley, Kathryn Wayne, Digital Visual Resources Planning: Report of the Digital Visual Resources Task Force, 10 June 2003, revised 26 August 2003, < of california.edu/sopag/vrtf/VRTF_Report_082603.doc (29 April 2007).
manifestation or in a utilitarian one and includes such items as maps, mechanical
drawings, building plans, etc.. Photographs could have been created by a recognized “art
phographer,” a snapshot taken by, or of, someone famous or otherwise noteworthy,
and/or identify a time and place. Film/video could be documenting a performance,
describing a time and place, or be of narrative content. The process of digitizing visual
resources is relatively similar to the process for digitizing visual art resources for any of
the above mediums. Ultimately, if the intent is for either of the materials to be used on a
computer, both are reduced to pixels.
Many institutions are digitizing their holdings. Included in the materials being
digitized are visual arts resources. One focus for many universities and museums is to
acquire, develop and manage digital information. Among the services provided by
libraries are databases of free web resources, bibliographic databases, electronic data files
and full text resources, commercial online services licensed to the library or institution,
and large assortments of various forms of audio visual materials.
Digital projects occur in the following areas: 1) conversion/digital reformatting
projects; 2) online exhibitions; 3) electronic publishing and research guides; 4) web
publishing and archiving projects.
Collections of digital visual arts resources are held by galleries that are either
government agencies, such as the National Archives and Records Administration, the
Library of Congress, museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
Museum of Modern Art, colleges and universities, and large private collectors, to name a
few. Of those named, the universities’ process of the conversion of hard copy items
visual/visual arts resources to digital resources is the best documented.
Some universities offer links to other sources of visual art resources. The
University of California has achieved some recognition for its efforts in the area of
digitization, archiving some of its holdings digitally and making them widely available
over the internet without restricting access. The University of California, Santa Cruz
(USCS), Digital Image Resource website for teaching and research at UCSC includes
links to many additional visual arts resources, to include ARTstor, an Andrew Mellon
Foundation project, the Associated Press AccuNet Multimedia Archive, the California
Digital Library, Calisphere, the Louvre, the FineArtsMuseum of San Francisco, the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art online collection. Harvard and Yale also provide access
to visual arts resources.2
There are several reasons for colleges, universities and museums to be
entering into this service of providing online access to their resources. Instruction and
the ability to do research has provided much incentive. Greater visibility is also a benefit,
especially to smaller institutions and facilities. Of interest is that in some instances
making digital surrogates of visual materials available over the internet has increased the
desire to view the original documents and to purchase hard copies from the displaying
body. Oxford University Press mounted a series of publications online in full text.
Subsequently there was an increase in hard copies ordered of these materials.3
Problem
As with any emerging trend, digitization of visual art resources has created new
______
2 University of California, Santa Cruz, “Home Page,” March 2007, (30 April 2007).
3 Council of Libraries for Information and Research, Publication 78, Scholarship, Instruction, and Libraries at the Turn of the Century, (1 May 2007).
challenges within the library profession. Issues that must be addressed with digital visual
resources include the same issues that must be looked at in regular archives: preservation
issues, copyright issues, accessibility/availability issues, the need for consistent standards
and policies, cost factors and the economy that is driving this market. Technology is a
large factor that permeates and complicates each of the above-referenced issues as
digitatization is a technical area whether considered independently or as applied to
archival preservation of ditigal images.
One characteristic inherent in the virtual world is that of hastening the process of
getting more information available digitally to meet more needs faster. This rush to
provide greater access to more materials more quickly has complicated some of the key
issues that surround the digitization of visual resources. The pace of this new technology
makes it difficult to keep up to date with preserving digital media. The incompatibility of
current technology and emerging trends require vigilance in transferring materials sooner
rather than later to keep from losing information forever. Yet new information is
becoming available that also should be preserved, and standards are evolving before they
are even adopted. The trend is to build new markets and better technologies with no
real cohesive standardized mode, or architecture, to address the organization and
preservation of information as it becomes available – and this isn’t taking into
consideration the backlog to preserve current and historic information. As if preserving
an object over time is not a demanding task, with archiving digital material, creating and
preserving the accompanying metadata to retain technical and historical context in which
the original was created is also a challenge, and provenance must be addressed.
A variety of users with different needs are using digital resources. This number is
increasing as computer usage is more prevalent in the curriculum of elementary schools
with more students being comfortable and knowledgeable about computer technology
and the internet at an earlier age. More adults are learning to navigate their way on the
computer also, adding to the high demand for digital resources over the internet.
The ways digital materials are used are as diverse as the users. According to the
Visual Materials Task Force of the Council of the CLIR, high school and university
students today use electronic resources almost exclusively. At art museums, however, art
historians prefer to view original materials. One finding from a survey conducted of
faculty by the College Art Association is that art faculty wanted access to art images even
if the quality is poor and with low resolution. Besides students, teachers/professors,
and researchers, other groups that use online collections of visual art resources include
creators, librarians, artists and the general public.
New technology takes generations to become stable, yet the internet is
approximately 15 years old. A problem with digital information is in the form it takes.
Two components are required for it to become “real.” The information, which is in one
form, needs the appropriate equipment to be used and read to be realized. Not only are
the modes of information becoming outdated, but the equipment to experience the digital
media are also becoming outdated, compounding the issue. There are many new
technologies to be addressed that have become obsolete without a suitable equivalent to
migrate the information to being in place prior to the information being converted.
With the current increasing influx of information, many important decisions must
be made about what to preserve.
Howard Besser’s identified five key technical problems necessary for digital
preservation:
- The viewing problem is the maintenance of an infrastructure and
the technical expertise necessary to make digital documents readable.
- The scrambling problem is decoding any compression or technical
protection service software protecting the web page.
- The interrelation problem is preserving the contexts that give
information meaning, such as links to other Web pages.
- The custodial problem is defining the standards, best practices, and
collection policies that define the boundary of the work and its provenance
and authenticity.
- The translation problem concerns the way in which the experience and
meaning of the web page are changed by migrating it into new delivery
services.4
Digitization is one issue, making information available over the
internet is another, but an important one to consider when discussing long term
preservation. The internet is a transient delivery mechanism that grows and disappears
continuously. Almost 50 percent of web pages from the late 1990’s are unavailable, with
the average duration of a web page being 44 days.5 When looked at as a whole, the trend
for archiving digital resources over the internet appears to be an insurmountable task for
all but large institutions, such as the Federal Government and large galleries and
museums. Yet information disappears from these sites as well.
Because visual art resources are available over the World Wide Web, a discussion
______
4 Peter Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, Council on Library Information and Resources, Publication 106,
June, 2003, (30 April 2007).
5 Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, June, 2003.
of archiving the internet is necessary to further understanding of digitizing visual
resources. Peter Lyman describes the ephemeral nature of the internet in his paper
Archiving the World Wide Web. The very definition of Web page is of an image called
into place by entering a Uniform Resource Locater (URL) into a Web reader. As with
any conversion of digital information, to remain authentic to the original, the
document/image must be translated verbatim to the copy and include context and “evoke
the experience of the original.”6 As Web pages contain links to other Web pages and
may itself include sounds or images, Lyman argues that this entire package must be
preserved if the Web page is to be preserved7. Unlike a book for which revisions are
handled in terms of new editions, each providing a relatively stationary context for
reviewing the new information, any aspect of the Web page could change. Does the Web
page need to be preserved at every point in time, when it was created, or should some
other criteria be used? Who is to judge8? Additionally, Web pages contain compound
design elements that are progressively evolving as new technical innovations become
realized9. Add to this the intellectual property rights that are attached to each element,
and for which the page itself and the links are subject to, and the end result is that
permission is required from each rights holder, making appropriate use of the internet for
digitized materials a complex, almost insurmountable, task.
As with any developing technology, legal issues are defined by challenges that
arise from conflicts previously unknown. Intellectual property laws have been created to
______
6 Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, June, 2003.
7 Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, June, 2003.
8 Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, June, 2003.
9 Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, June, 2003.
facilitate developing the digital marketplace10. A hundred years of court actions and
decisions to guide this emerging economy are not in place. Copyright laws for digital
media is fairly new, and as applied to the internet, is still in its infancy. Long term
implications of today’s laws have yet to be realized. The development of best practices
can help to guide the integrity of the people who make decisions and work in this
industry. Some high-profile institutions, like the Library of Congress, have a disclaimer
that reminds users that permission to use any information on their site must be obtained
from the owner of the item.
Widespread collaboration of stakeholder groups is necessary to determine best
practices for the mounting of digital images over the internet, and the care and
maintenance of the individual images and the collections to which the images may be a
part of. Standards and policies must be developed and adopted by all users that can meet
the needs and be used by all participants.
Discussion
Several groups, organizations and institutions that have an interest in the
digitization of images and image collections have been working to untangle the issues
that surround digitizing images. This section will consider the diverse nature of some of
work of the representative agencies in this field.
The American Library Association (ALA), as a leader in the field of Library
Information Science drafted Digitization Principles in early 2007. These are currently
available over the internet and comments are solicited from interested parties. Cited in
______
10 Lyman, Archiving the World Wide Web, June, 2003.
the introduction of the principles for the digitization of content, “The principles will