VLEs, distance learning courses and digital classrooms present some huge copyright challenges. How does a slide librarian move her institution’s collection from analogue to digital? Jenny Godfrey explores the issues.
As a provider of a collection of purely physical entities – slides – I am beginning to be seen as rather old-fashioned. The library at University of Wales Institute Cardiff (Uwic) is typical: it subscribes to many electronic text resources and its web page offers access to these and to selected links. Staff work hard to raise awareness of these e-resources. In 2002-03 we spent about 23 per cent of our information budget on them, probably double our spend in 1998.
The coming of age of this electronic environment was the arrival of virtual learning environments (VLEs), now present in well over 100 UK HE institutions. VLEs enable lecturers to deliver teaching materials remotely in electronic form.
Users already know that with online digital image databases they can search and select at home, the images are always available and there is no classification system to master. They are beginning to wonder why the library’s images cannot also be supplied in digital form.
The current Uwic collection has more than 94,000 slides, growing in line with user needs. Slides continue to be added for specific lectures and seminars. I buy some, but in the main I photograph images from books and journals brought to me. Thanks to the Design & Artists Copyright Society Slide Collection Licensing Scheme (Dacs SCLS) licence these slides are legal.
Users can expect specialist help from the librarian in choosing what images to look for, searching and using the classification scheme. They can discuss their research topic; they often begin by asking a simple question, and the librarian’s skill involves drawing out the drift of thought behind these words to gain an idea of the many and various images which will be of use.
There is a paper-based system to ensure loans are regulated and overdue slides are chased up, which could be done electronically using barcodes. The library does not usually concern itself with the slides once they leave the library. It works on a modest budget, and rarely needs to buy capital equipment.
How can a digital library be designed to perform at least as well as the slide library?
A mature, successful slide collection provides the images people want. We have a core collection, the slides borrowed most regularly (e.g on popular themes such as ‘the body and art’ or ‘art and ethnicity’, entire subject areas such as design history or media studies, plus the more traditional canon of ‘the story of art and architecture’ of 40 years ago, which is quite sizeable).
Slide publishers such as Davis Art Slides, Hartill and Saskia offer digital images both as separate images and in large survey sets. But the quickest way to buy enough digital images to create a core collection of adequate size is through subscriptions to large databanks such as Amico, ArtStor, Education Image Gallery, Corbis Images for Education and Scran.
Core images
ArtStor explicitly aims to provide the core images for art history education: ‘The Image Gallery is meant to offer the sort of cohesion typically associated with an art history curriculum or with an art history slide and photograph collection... ArtStor will provide digital versions of many of the images and basic cataloguing information currently sought out in
everyday practice by educators, scholars and students.’
There are also government-funded collections, subscription-based image banks and private, free websites such as Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) which have significant collections.
None of these can hope to accommodate the total needs in HE by itself, but if they are linked and interrogated through a single search interface (library portals such as Talis Prism can do this) the virtual collection becomes very large indeed.
But digital collections also need to add images on demand. Image needs are (outside the core collection) very individual and could never be provided any other way. Lecturers also generate their own digital images. So that they can be linked to other resources like Amico for cross-searching, it is vital that the software incorporates technical standards for resource sharing.
If institutions generate many different, separately managed projects and if access remains unlinked, requiring a whole range of URLs and passwords, it will be like the bad old days when slides resided in filing cabinets all over the institution, invisible to all but their ‘owners’.
The Dacs SCLS licence allows slides to be made by copy photography from published material and kept in a library-style collection for staff and students. There is no similar provision for making digital images. It is illegal without obtaining rights clearance for each image. This takes up a lot of time and money even if no charge is levied by the rightsholders. The education sector is seeking a blanket scanning licence to make digital images. Arlis and Acadi are working with Dacs and the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) to achieve this goal.
In a good slide library, the user can expect specialist help. With a digital collection users may be alone at their terminals. A study this year at University College Northampton confirmed that students access electronic information in departments, IT suites and off campus as well as in the library – 52 per cent access off campus at least weekly, only 14 per cent never do so.
Feeding in the expertise and retrieval skills of the slide librarian at data input stage becomes absolutely vital. When inputting controlled keywords into a well-designed database of text records, librarians use their subject expertise and knowledge of likely questions to build in this help electronically. Text access points need to accommodate every kind of question: names, dates, styles, materials and methods, nationality, gender, location, subject matter, etc.
The absence of physical librarian assistance can be partly compensated for by standards such as Dublin Core or VRA Core Categories 3 when selecting field names to house data, controlled vocabularies and thesauri, and picking lists to help borrowers choose terms the database recognises. Remote methods of inferring users’ needs can also be set up by tracking transactions electronically – detecting failed searches, heavily used areas, etc – and by conducting user surveys. The more sophisticated the automated system, the better it will function. The slide librarian will progress from real-life helper to expert in translating their knowledge into effective data entry and retrieval, using appropriate professional standards.
Browsing
Users find browsing slide drawers a powerful method of selecting pictures. While they browse they often talk about their ideas, communicating valuable information to the librarian, who comes naturally to understand their needs. Communication of this kind will be lost if digital collections are only searched away from the librarian.
New types of support for users will need to include email, online tutorials, FAQs, feedback forms, helpdesks (virtual or face-to-face), helplines and chat reference desks. But unless the visual resources curator is still highly visible and available in the library, communication probably won’t be as good.
In a slide collection the image is retrieved by following the classification order to the slide drawer. From a digital image database the same digital images can be viewed on screen by many people concurrently, and they can all download their own versions. Librarians will not manage circulation of the images, for none go out on loan.
Control of usage will be for copyright purposes: librarians will probably need to guarantee the limits of use of digital images sold or licensed to them (for example, they may be available only on the institution’s secure intranet or only at pre-set times, or only to certain groups). Institutions themselves will want to build in this facility so that, if there are cheaper options in exchange for tighter access controls, they can guarantee compliance. Access rights can be, and already are, built into HE intranets through password protection behind institutional firewalls.
Software to track use
Software that can track actual use may be another feature of digital image ‘loan management’. Knowing how many times an image has been downloaded, and by what category of user, will not only help secure rights-owners’ trust but will go some way to enabling librarians to hold on to an understanding of users’ activities and needs.
In a slide collection, once users find the slide they go away and the library suspends its relationship with them. Curators of a digital collection, however, need to be very aware of the many potential uses of their images. They must ensure that software used to store data can link to software designed to present it, and address issues such as what resolution to scan and store images at – the kind of technical information that Tasi offers.
A user may wish to transfer the images to a VLE or mount them on a web page but, while formal lectures are still held, there will also be a need for presentation software to project the image on to a screen large enough for a roomful of people.
Presentation software is now appearing with features specifically designed for art and design teaching. The Madison Digital Image Database, created at James Madison University in the US by slide librarians, audiovisual technicians, pedagogues and lecturers, allows images to be selected, saved and stored ready to be projected and then manipulated at the click of a mouse. For example, lecturers can skip to and fro among the images, zoom in, crop and set images together for comparison. The text record from the database can be projected or hidden at will. And of course these images and text records can be saved for students to consult later.
Slide libraries are quite cheap to maintain once they have matured. Annual upkeep involves on average one full-time member of staff, a modest materials budget and the fee to Dacs. The digital collection shows a very different picture. Digital images are often charged according to the size of the user base: for Uwic (usually classed as a medium-sized institution) Amico would cost about £3,000 a year, Scran about £400. Saskia would charge a one-off licence fee of £900 for 100 images at high resolution for a four-campus university of 9,000 students. ArtStor, available as yet only in the US, costs a $17,000 start-up fee plus annual payment of $8,500 for a medium-sized institution.
Digital images from commercial sources mirror the previous cost of buying commercially produced slides – far more than the cost of a copy photography slide. Davis Art Slides’ Survey of Art History gives 548 images for £1,500. A new UK licence for making in-house digital images would be a new, as yet unknown, annual cost.
There is also staff time. The US experience is that physical and digital collections are still growing side by side. Curators are making digital images but still maintain – even add to – their slide collections. Extra staff would therefore be needed. And the all-important creation of rich and controlled metadata for the catalogue record – the more time-consuming but vital part of making a digital image collection – will require extra time. There is also the cost of training.
New products to create digital images will be necessary – scanners, digital cameras, computers and monitors, storage systems and software to manage and manipulate images. Many institutions already have some video projectors, but there would have to be one in every lecture and seminar room. We are looking at sums of money hitherto unheard of for image provision in HE in the UK.
Co-operation is the only answer. Slide libraries will need to join forces with other key departments to achieve the ultimate goal – a networked, institution-wide image database that can link to other resources. A cross-departmental team can share costs and bid for funds from more sources for pilot projects that will build into a central digital resource. We must avoid supporting isolated projects, which ultimately support only stand-alone groups within the institution.
The library and the teaching/learning department have similar aims, which would be furthered by a digital image database. The third key department is IT – essential to any computer-based project. It is vital to have representatives from the IT department on the planning team at the outset. The staff who buy and maintain audiovisual equipment must also be included.
Slide librarians’ expertise
Slide librarians, more than any other professionals within an HE institution, understand the model of a networked, institution-wide image database, because it is an extension of their slide service. Crucially, they understand the needs of slide users – the digital image users-to-be. Too often in the past, digitisation projects have ignored this aspect in their planning and have been rewarded by being little used. Slide librarians need to pass on their expertise.
Why do it? Such a database that can link to other resources exceeds the capabilities of a slide collection and is valuable enough educationally to be seen as a sustainable resource for any institution.
It offers expanded access – at a distance, to limitless multiple users, anytime and anywhere, with seamless integration into e-learning courses alongside other media such as video and sound. And it allows flexible presentation – an improvement on the fixed sequence of whole images in the slide carousel.
It offers expanded use of images for teaching and learning. Students could explore the huge image databases, perhaps as part of a VLE course in which they address certain ideas and issues by reference to the images and text records. This would extend their learning experience and be a way to formalise browsing and enable it to be assessed by tutors.
It provides broader content and larger datasets. And the slide librarian can dispense with time-consuming tasks such as labelling, filing and the problems of multiple users chasing the same image.
The VRA-L list was recently agitated with the news – before the official press release in 2003 – that Kodak is phasing out production of slide projectors. Although Kodak discounted the possibility, discussion turned to the notion that it won’t be long before Kodak ceases making slide film and developer chemicals. One message asked: ‘Should vendors switch totally to digital imaging? Are there any colleges and institutions which still intend to purchase slides? Already a number of major museums have… ceased film production, and most of the larger commercial galleries have done or are in the process of doing the same.’
Discussion and rumour continue to this day. Every time someone finds it difficult to get slide film from a normally reliable supplier, a tremor runs through the listserv. It seems that US slide librarians now either operate dual copystands and make both a slide and a digital image of everything they photograph, or make digital images only, and use a film recorder to make a slide from the digital image if required.
Because of copyright, cost and the sheer scale of the task, institutions will not be able overnight to field the full range of digital images organised in the way I have described – the kind of resource which can take over from, and then surpass, slide libraries.
However, I think activity in digital image acquisition will increase soon. The Courtauld Institute’s Colour Slide Scheme is investigating the market for its images in digital form. A survey of subscribers found that 33 per cent are already scanning digitally, with others planning to do so soon. Half are interested in a digital image subscription and a large percentage estimate that the change to digital will occur over the next two to five years.
We are in an interesting position, in a period of transition.
Jenny Godfrey is Information Adviser, Slide Library at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff(jgodfrey@uwic.ac.uk). This article is an edited version of the keynote presentation Jenny gave at ‘Slide Libraries and the Digital Future’, the Arlis conference, at the Royal College of Art, in March.
Updated: 20 January 2005