10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 1 University Digital Image Distribution: Results of a Study Howard Besser Associate Professor UCLA School of Education & Information Robert Yamashita Assistant Professor Interdisciplinary Track in Science and Society California State University, San Marcos

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 2 OUTLINE Overview the project and goals –MESL Project –Mellon Study General cost data (for universities) Review one key practice issues (interface) Present some critical observations –legacy institutions

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 3 The Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL) Distribution of museum images and metadata to university community Approximately 10,000 image set from 7 museums Identical data set mounted locally at each of the 7 universities Voluntary participation, each institution paying own way, Getty paying for coordination and meetings

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 4 Samples from a MESL Site

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 5 Samples from a MESL Site

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 6 Creating New Image Sets (Views)

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 7 Creating New Image Sets (Views)

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 8 Teaching Tools

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE 99 9 The UCB Mellon Grant- (Assessing Museum Costs) Assessing University Costs (Assessing Costs of Slide Libraries) Examining Faculty & Student Use & Assessment of Usefullness (Comparing MESL User Interfaces) (Comparing MESL Search Discrepancies)

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Cost Assessment Methodology MESL Technical Report Questionnaire –primarily voluntary self-reporting Clarifications and follow-up questions from Berkeley researchers Data Analysis by Berkeley researchers

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE MANAGED IMAGE (volume) Unique characteristics for “objects” in an open or shared user environment Consists of a formal association of multiple data elements Allows the volume to be accessed (“shared”) by multiple users CRITICAL element is “MANAGED” not “image”

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE MESL: BASIC DISTRIBUTION FORMULA Protect Copyright Control user access to the data Insertion of a security component

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE MESL: ACTUAL DISTRIBUTION Variation of Basic Distribution Model Processing Center - Error-Checking (many sources to one) Security Element - Manage Permissions to use USAGE - assumed and essentially undefined

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Museum Cost Centers Content Selection Image Preparation Image Transmission Text/Data Preparation Text/Data Transmission

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Cost Center Diagram

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Slide Library Cost Centers Acquisition Capture (equipment) Data (gathering information) Mounting (data on slide, catalog record) Delivery (controlling access and reshelving) Maintenance

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE University Digital Distribution Cost Centers Image Preparation Structured Data Unstructured Data Functionality Security Log Files Outreach Usage Training Technical Development

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Average Cost per University

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Data Examples from University Study- Overall TIME 3 examples in Specific Areas –DATA preparation Image preparation Structured data preparation –DATA access “functionality”

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Overall Time Spent Hours Worked

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Image Preparation Hours Worked

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Structured Data Preparation

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Functionality

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE SUMMARY observations

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE University Infrastructure Costs High speed networks Classroom projection Workstation labs Workstations Costs must be spread across the entire campus

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE University Issues More technology resources for Humanities departments Faculty need incentives to teach with digital images Resources and tools are needed to making teaching with digital images less difficult Universities need to make digital projects a priority and need to find funding to carry them out

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Security Universities can exercise sufficient control over initial access to image Museums may want more sophisticated protection to prevent copying and reposting

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Metadata posed more of a problem than images –Mapping fields –Different vocabularies Integration of records from different museums

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Some General Observations: Do costs diminish in subsequent years? Technology is changing so fast that development done just a year before can be obsolete Costs increase in 2nd year both because year #1 deployment exposed all the interesting things that one might like to do, and because increased size and use necessitated increased security One site estimated that their lower year #2 costs were 60% due to learning curve and 40% due to availability of better (imaging) software

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Examining Faculty & Student Use & Usefulness What Faculty Do with Digital Images Major Issues for Faculty Faculty Concerns about teaching with Digital Images Faculty Concerns about Image Quality and Metadata

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Comparing User Interfaces Presentation and layout Search options Image display and labeling

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Findings -

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Digital Distribution is: Good for individual usage Problematic for group viewing

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Content Issues Selection will be museum-driven (MESL content selection won’t scale up) Sufficient critical mass? All the appropriate images needed to teach? Transparent integration with locally- mounted images and those from other sources?

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Query and Use Users will want more than just query options Centralized development of searching, user interface, and tools is much more cost effective than than local development Local development can be more quickly responsive to local needs

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Storage & Bandwidth Technological advances make this less of an impediment May still cause bottlenecks in centralized delivery systems

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Universities and Museums MESL showed that universities and museums have common interests in providing images and metadata to users Will need to address issues arising when faculty produce new information built on museum information –enhanced content flowing back to the museum –distribution of faculty added-value products

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE New Audiences Potential for outreach to new constituencies within the university community, and new communities outside the university New audiences may have very different types of needs –most audiences won’t be able to decipher curatorial language –K-12 audiences will need added value of thematic arrangements

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Copyright Issues In flux Too many unknowns Very problematic for 20th century works

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Value of Museum Info to Universities Likely more in authoritative metadata than in images alone

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE: analog slide libraries

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Centralized delivery to users & local mounting How to transparently integrate both?

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE ANALOG DISTRIBUTION PATH Bottom-up distribution model (PULL model - content on demand) Driven by users and usage (presumes fair use) Focus on servicing user base

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Analog Slide Libraries + Perform valuable services that a centrally- supplied source reliably can’t Customized for local needs (coverage, metadata, vocabulary) Rapid response to local needs Departmentally funded (in contrast to likely funding of centrally-supplied information) Average size - 280,000 images

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Coexistence of Analog and Digital Many years before we reach a critical mass in digital form Many more years before we’ll have the right images to teach with Instructors will draw on both slide libraries and digital collections But how will universities financially support both? Responsibility for digital collections is likely to rest within a campuswide unit (not a departmental one)

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Costs Digital distribution under MESL was expensive Costs will decline from learning curves and new technological tools Cost will increase with each change to new technologies Per-image infrastructure costs will decline as fixed costs are spread over a larger number of images New costs will arise as the scope of the project increases –security becomes more of an issue Digital distribution has the potential to reach far more potential users than an analog system

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Conflicting Needs University administrators want to control costs; faculty want to ensure continued access to the images around which they build curricula Museum delivery systems will need an ongoing revenue stream

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Similar Needs Both universities and museums own content Both universities and museums extensively use images in carrying out their mission Universities and museums have more in common than differences

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE CONCLUSIONS

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Some Concluding Remarks on the Study Authoritative museum information has great value to universities University infrastructure costs for image delivery are very large, and cannot be justified solely for cultural heritage Greatest savings for universities are likely to come from digital delivery of authoritative descriptive information about the image The university market does not have enough resources to financially sustain the costs of a museum consortium’s digital distribution system, and such a system must be subsidized by the museums or from external sources.

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Further Study questions Will digital distribution replace slide libraries? Will target groups use digitally distributed images? Who in the University will contract for digital image distribution rights?

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Future Research Examine real operational systems How to integrate information from a remote source with locally mounted information What do faculty need in order to begin widespread teaching with digital images? How will teaching change as digital image resources become more available? What kind of additional tools will users need? How will the different vocabularies used by museums be integrated for user access? What standards will be needed, and how will the right parties be brought together? Pedagogy of using online resources

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE Observations about Study Design Studying prototypes, experiments, early stage, etc. is very difficult –staff overworked and touchy –who performs what function is ad hoc –does not really resemble a production environment Studying complex and/or hetrogenous organizations creates problems –units of measurement –parallel workflows Studying Digital Libraries will be difficult (at least in the early stages -- when it’s most needed)

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE The UCB Mellon Grant Studying MESL- The MESL Project The Mellon-Funded Studies –Comparing User Interfaces –Museum Study –University Delivery Study –Faculty User Study –Slide Library The Study’s Conclusions

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE UCB Mellon Grant Research Team Howard Besser, UCB Faculty Bob Yamashita, CSU Faculty Rosalie Lack, SIMS graduate student Joanne Miller, SIMS graduate student Lena Stebley, SJSU graduate student

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE UCB Mellon Grant Consultants Christie Stephenson, NYU Librarian for Digital Initiatives Beth Sandore, UIUC Library Digital Initiatives Coordinator Christine Sundt, UO Slide Curator...assistance from MESL participants and staff

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE UCB Mellon Grant Advisory Board Gary Marchionini, Professor of Information Science, Univ of Maryland Marvin Sirbu, Professor of Economics, Carnegie-Mellon Univ Malcolm Getz, Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt Margaret Radin, Professor of Law, Stanford University Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information

10/28/99Besser & Yamashita--EDUCAUSE University Digital Image Distribution: Results of a Study Spring 1999 special issue of Visual Resources or order print copy from: –UC Berkeley Mellon Grant –Howard Besser –School of Information Mgmt & Systems –UC Berkeley, CA