Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 20:47:14 +0000
From: David Green <david@ninch.org>
Subject: Digital Image Distribution Study released
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NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
February 8, 1999
DIGITAL IMAGE DISTRIBUTION STUDY NOW AVAILABLE
Berkeley Mellon Study of MESL Project
* * * *
Press Release:
<http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon/99press-release.html>
Report: "The Cost of Digital Image Distribution: The Social and Economic
Implications of the Production, Distribution, and Usage of Image Data"
<http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon>
Last year, the Getty Trust published its report on one of the most
influential and seminal digital projects of recent years, the Museum
Educational Site Licensing project.
Initially created to discover and define acceptable terms and conditions
for licensing the distribution of digital museum images in the educational
community, it grew to encompass, and bring its participants to grapple
with, in the words of Eleanor Fink (director of the sponsoring Getty
Information Institute) "issues from content selection, image capture, and
standards for recording and transmitting data to systems interface design,
faculty and student training in new technology, software tool development,
use and impact studies, economic analyses and intellectual property
questions."
The Getty issued its report in two volumes last year: ""Delivering Digital
Images: Cultural Heritage Resources for Education," ($24.95; from
<http://www.getty.edu/publications/titles/deliv/index.html> and "Images
Online: Perspectives from the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project."
($12.50; from <http://www.getty.edu/publications/titles/images/index.html>.
Now, a Mellon Foundation-financed economic study of the MESL project,
conducted by the University of California at Berkeley has just been
released. "The Cost of Digital Image Distribution: The Social and Economic
Implications of the Production, Distribution, and Usage of Image Data"
examines MESL's cost centers in the distribution of a digital library of
images and metadata.
The findings, according to the release,"should be of interest to anyone
contemplating image digitization or distribution, particularly to a
scholarly audience. It should be of particular interest to those involved
in funding and/or planning activities involving either analog or digital
image distribution."
David Green
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>Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 23:27:11 -0800 (PST)
>From: Howard Besser <howard@SIMS.Berkeley.EDU>
>To: David Green <david@ninch.org>
>
SPECIAL REPORT ON DIGITAL IMAGE DISTRIBUTION STUDY IS NOW AVAILABLE
This press release looks better viewed on a web browser at
http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon/99press-release.html
A special report examining the costs of distributing digital images to the
university community has just been released. "The Cost of Digital Image
Distribution: The Social and Economic Implications of the Production,
Distribution, and Usage of Image Data" is the result of a 22-month UC
Berkeley study of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL),
supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The MESL Project, sponsored by the Getty Information Institute, was the
first attempt to create a collection of images and descriptive information
from a variety of museums and deliver it digitally to university users of
campus networks. The two-year experimental collaboration among seven
museums and seven universities succeeded in distributing approximately
10,000 images for classroom use and individual research, primarily in the
areas of cultural studies, art history, history, and photography.
The Cost of Digital Image Distribution identifies, defines, and explores
MESL's primary cost centers in the digital network distribution of images
and accompanying text. It examines the processes and costs of analog slide
libraries, and compares the analog and digital distribution systems. It
also considers the intangible factors that can lead to the success or
failure of digital distribution schemes, such as learning curve, ease or
difficulty of maintenance, and faculty attitudes towards teaching with
digital images.
The findings presented in this report should be of interest to anyone
contemplating image digitization or distribution, particularly to a
scholarly audience. It should be of particular interest to those involved
in funding and/or planning activities involving either analog or digital
image distribution.
Major findings include:
-It will be a long time before digital image repositories will be able to
deliver the critical mass of images needed for instruction and research.
Analog slide libraries and digital image repositories will necessarily
coexist for many years.
-The higher education community is enthusiastic about providing access to
digital images and information from cultural heritage repositories.
However, many impediments to widespread adoption must be dealt
with--ranging from lack of comprehensive content and the absence of
necessary tools to facilitate use, to inadequate recognition and support
for faculty who adopt new technology in their teaching.
-The anticipated shift from analog slide libraries to licensed digital
images represents a shift from ownership to access through ongoing
subscription. This shift is analogous to the changes that have taken place
in university library collections. University administrators are
concerned about controlling content costs and faculty are concerned about
ongoing access to the images they use and need. Those university positions
are at odds with those of museum image distribution consortia, who seek a
consistent revenue stream and are reluctant to assure ongoing access
without ongoing payment. For such image distribution schemes to work, both
museums and universities have to see their common goals as outweighing
their individual concerns.
"The Cost of Digital Image Distribution: The Social and Economic
Implications of the Production, Distribution, and Usage of Image Data"
Howard Besser, Principal Investigator; Robert Yamashita, Project Manager
A report to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation--A Study of the Economics of
Network Access to Visual Information: The Museum Educational Site
Licensing Project, Published by the School of Information Management and
Systems, U.C. Berkeley, 1998 Available online at
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon in both html and
PDF format
Paper copies of this report may also be ordered c/o Howard Besser, School
of Information Management & Systems, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California,
94720-4600
.._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.
Howard Besser
Associate Professor
UCLA Department of Information Studies
address thru August 1999:
School of Information Management & Systems
102 South Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-4600
tel: (510)643-7365
office: (510)642-1464
fax: (510)642-5814
howard@sims.berkeley.edu
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~howard/
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David L. Green
Executive Director
NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR A NETWORKED CULTURAL HERITAGE
21 Dupont Circle, NW
Washington DC 20036
<http://www.ninch.org>
david@ninch.org
202/296-5346 202/872-0886 fax
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