10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 1 Social and Economic Implications of the Production, Distribution, and Usage of Image Data Howard Besser Associate Professor UCLA School of Education & Information

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 2 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 4 Samples from a MESL Site

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 5 Samples from a MESL Site

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 6 Creating New Image Sets (Views)

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 7 Creating New Image Sets (Views)

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 8 Teaching Tools

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 9 The UCB Mellon Grant Studying MESL Grant Team The Studies –(Comparing User Interfaces) –(Comparing Search Discrepancies) –(Assessing Museum Costs) –University Delivery Study –Slide Library Costs –Slide Circulation Patterns –Faculty User Study Summary & Conclusions

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 10 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 11 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 12 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 13 The UCB Mellon Grant- (Comparing MESL User Interfaces) (Comparing MESL Search Discrepancies) (Assessing Museum Costs) Assessing University Costs Assessing Costs of Slide Libraries Examining Faculty & Student Use & Usefullness

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 14 Comparing User Interfaces Presentation and layout Search options Image display and labeling

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 15 Cost Assessment Methodology MESL Technical Report Questionnaire –primarily voluntary self-reporting Clarifications and follow-up questions from Berkeley researchers Data Analysis by Berkeley researchers

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 16 Museum Cost Centers Content Selection Image Preparation Image Transmission Text/Data Preparation Text/Data Transmission

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 17 University Digital Distribution Cost Centers Image Preparation Structured Data Unstructured Data Functionality Security Log Files Outreach Usage Training Technical Development

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 18 Univ Cost Cntr Diagram

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 19 Slide Library Cost Centers Acquisition Capture (equipment) Data (gathering information) Mounting (data on slide, catalog record) Delivery (controlling access and reshelving) Maintenance

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 20 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 21 Data Examples from University Study-

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 22 Overall Time Spent Hours Worked

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 23 Image Preparation Hours Worked

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 24 Structured Data Preparation

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 25 Functionality

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 26 Average Cost per University

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 27 University Infrastructure Costs High speed networks Classroom projection Workstation labs Workstations Costs must be spread across the entire campus

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 28 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 29 Findings -

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 30 Digital Distribution is: Good for individual usage Problematic for group viewing

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 31 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?

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 32 Metadata posed more of a problem than images –Mapping fields –Different vocabularies Integration of records from different museums

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 33 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 34 Storage & Bandwidth Technological advances make this less of an impediment May still cause bottlenecks in centralized delivery systems

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 35 Security Universities can exercise sufficient control over initial access to image Museums may want more sophisticated protection to prevent copying and reposting

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 36 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 37 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 38 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 39 Copyright Issues In flux Too many unknowns Very problematic for 20th century works

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 40 Value of Museum Info to Universities Likely more in authoritative metadata than in images alone

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 41 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 42 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)

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 43 Centralized delivery to users & local mounting How to transparently integrate both?

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 44 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 45 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 46 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 47 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

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 48 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.

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 49 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?

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 50 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)

10/21/99Besser--SIMS Affiliates 51 Social and Economic Implications of the Production, Distribution, and Usage of Image Data 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