Message-Id: <200106141855.LAA18228@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 11:49:53 -0700 From: Trudy Levy <mailto:trudy@DIG-MAR.COM> Subject: Re: Naming Convention for Digital Image Files? To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
<pre>
Rob - I have been following this discussion with some interest and would like to add to you list of guidelines for creat
ng a naming scheme.
1. Each file name must be unique.
2. Unique does not mean meaningless so yes any general naming scheme ideally preserves in filenames themselves a trace o
the identity of each image's source object.
3. Definitely be consistently formatted
4. This "meaning" be self evident or self documented, like the accession numbers.
5. Entry of the name be easy and not prone to human error!!
In conjunction with this last guideline, a client and I have have just developed a procedure where the database software
will generate a blank file named appropriately. When the digital image file is created it will be saved as this blank f
le, thus replacing it. Any thoughts to the functionality of this step?
Thanks
For the record - This naming convention is for a slide library not a collection. As they may have many images of one ob
ect and several forms of one image ( slide, original scan, derivative image sizes - Thumbnails, full screen) , we are us
ng the Image ID as basis for our naming with modifiers for derivatives of the original image file to distinguish the siz
. We are not trying to recapture the entire database in the file name, merely give it an appropriate "hook". *,-)
Trudy Levy
>Hi, Stephen and digital imaging list:
>
>>Do any of you who work on the Windows platform have, use, or promote
>>a naming convention for digital image files?
>
>I'd echo the broad sense of Snowden's recommendations. Here at the Davison Art Center we use a fairly similar if differ
ntly nuanced scheme, one also based in part on accession numbers as unique IDs for the real-world objects represented by
digital images (at least for less than wholly virtual art). Although we use Macs rather than Windows machines (so please
disregard the comments below if you wish!), I'll chime in anyway since naming conventions really do--or at least often s
ould--transcend platforms.
>
<snip>
Rob Lancefield <mailto:rlancefield@mail.wesleyan.edu>
>
> 1. Any general naming scheme ideally preserves in filenames themselves
> a trace of the identity of each image's source object, even in the
> face of real-world convergences of distinct objects with identical
> creators and titles--the same convergences which accession numbers
> long have served to disambiguate in regard to physical collections.
>
> 2. If (as is likely to be the case) such a scheme entails some sort of
> transformed version of each actual object's accession number, being
> strictly consistent in how this is done character-by-character will
> build a more usable resource in the long run and make it easier to
> rename copies of large numbers of images for unforeseen future uses.
>
<snip>
>Rob
>
>At 3:22 PM -0800 6/7/01, Snowden at the JANM wrote:
>>Hi Stephen--
>>
>>The naming convention we use at the Japanese American National Museum, which is the standard for the partner museums i
the consortium we work with (Museums of the Online Archive of California, online through the California Digital Library
at www.cdlib.org!), has been really successful for us. We name all files in our digital archive as follows:
>>
>>institutional acronym_object ID_part designator.file extension
>
>registrar of collections / manager of museum information services
>davison art center www.wesleyan.edu/dac
>301 high street, middletown ct 06459 usa tel. 860.685.2965
>
>chair, standards sig of the museum computer network www.mcn.edu
>maintainer, XMacL: XML News for Mac Users www.xmacl.com
-- Trudy Levy Image Integration The Digital Imaging Guide 7 Third Ave., SF, CA 94118 415/750 1274 Images are information - Manage them http://www.DIG-Mar.com</pre>
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