PictureAustralia

From: Stuart Glogoff (stuartg@U.ARIZONA.EDU)
Date: Wed Jan 17 2001 - 08:45:47 CST

  • Next message: Terry Kuny: "Query: Extracting metadata from JPEG headers" 

    Message-Id: <200101171546.IAA29680@dns.ccit.arizona.edu>
Date:         Wed, 17 Jan 2001 08:45:47 -0600
From: Stuart Glogoff <mailto:stuartg@U.ARIZONA.EDU>
Subject:      PictureAustralia
To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

    <pre> Thought IMAGELIB'ers would be interested in the site announced in this press release. Stuart

    VALLEY FORGE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 2001--The National Library of Australia (NLA) has launched an award winning site that allows Internet users to find images of Australia's cultural heritage.

    Winner of the Financial Review Australian Internet Award sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the PictureAustralia site contains up to 500,000 pictorial representations of anything that has shaped the nation, including national events, public figures, sporting icons and political figureheads.

    The images can be viewed for free, but people who use the service will be able purchase high-resolution copies online. The site is available at

    http://www.pictureaustralia.org/.

    PictureAustralia is the brainchild of Debbie Campbell, project manager of the service. She said the site had been designed to provide a single gateway - transparent to users -- of images from its own collection and those of other government institutions. Some of these institutions include the Australian War Memorial, the state libraries of NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, and the National Archives of Australia.

    "Australians don't know what each of these image collections [of the various institutions] have in them," Campbell said in reference to the array of photos contained in library and gallery archives across the country. Having PictureAustralia as the central reference site will make it easier for people to tap into these collections.

    Campbell said the site has been designed so it is simple to access. This

    includes an understanding of the likely users, who range from schoolchildren working on assignments through to the elderly. "In the first instance, we have kept software as simple as we can. For example, clients aren't required to download Flash," she said.

    On the server side, the search database uses the metadata schema called Dublin Core, a standard schema for describing objects. Once images are described, the descriptions are then placed in a subdirectory. When an image request is made, software provided by Blue Angel Technologies searches and browses interfaces in the library's metadata repository to find a match.

    To maintain the upload of pictures to the site by the various libraries,

    PictureAustralia will use Blue Angel's software to harvest, on a monthly

    basis, descriptive records for each of the new images it adds to its collection. Those descriptive records are then indexed by Blue Angel's software making it easy for each search request to pull up an accurate response.

    Campbell was confident of the site's success and business model. She said clients [institutions] pay the NLA a "modest fee" to be linked to the site and for associated marketing activity.

    "But to offset that, the NLA provides high level advice [to its clients]

    about metadata schemas," she said. According to Campbell, there is easily a potential for PictureAustralia to cull from 1 million images in the near future. "It's in our sights," she said.

    About Blue Angel Technologies, Inc. Blue Angel is an e-commerce solutions provider. Its innovative ML-based MetaStar software facilitates the capture, management, publishing and discovery or information within and between organizations.

    By using MetaStar as an application framework, organizations can quickly and easily deploy internet-based information management, knowledge retrieval and e-commerce applications without changing existing environments. For more information, visit Blue Angel's World Wide Web site at www.blueangeltech.com or call (610)-917-9200.

    ******************************* Stuart Glogoff mailto:stuartg@u.arizona.edu U of AZ Office of Distributed Learning Tucson, AZ 85721-0073
    (520) 626-5347 Fax (520) 626-8220 http://www.library.arizona.edu/sglogoff
    *******************************

    </pre>

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 17 2001 - 09:48:59 CST