Museum Educational Site Licensing Project

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Museum Educational Site Licensing Project

• Howard Besser
• UC Berkeley School of Info Mgmt Systems
• http//www.sims.berkeley.edu/howard/

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Museum Educational Site Licensing Project

• MESL Structure Governance
• Example of a MESL University Site
• Metadata Issues (Text)
• Standards Issues for Images
• Distribution and Deployment
• Teaching Issues
• Partnering
• Mellon Grant -- Users Uses, Costs

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Museum Educational Site Licensing Project

• Discover what it takes for museums to prepare and
  deliver images text
• procedures, costs, prior knowledge, standards
• Identify factors needed to increase use of museum
  images by the educational community
• Create a testbed which will help identify,
  review, evaluate other factors important to the
  participants
• security, unauthorized use, text identification
  accompanying each image

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MESL Goals and Objectives

• Define the terms and conditions for the
  educational use of digitized museum images and
  information distributed over campus networks.
• Develop, test and evaluate procedures,
  mechanisms, and standards for the collection and
  dissemination of digital images and information.
• Propose the framework of a broadly-based system
  for the ongoing distribution and educational use
  of museum images and information.
• Document and communicate experience and
  discoveries of the project.
• Begin to examine the impact of broad distribution
  of digital images on both museums and universities

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Sample MESL Query
Removed due to use agreement restrictions
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Sample MESL Query
Removed due to use agreement restrictions
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Samples from a MESL Site
Removed due to use agreement restrictions
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Samples from a MESL Site
Removed due to use agreement restrictions
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MESL Origins/History

• Lack of standards in Museum community
• Museums approached by growing number of digital
  image distributors
• Unknown issues around both terms conditions
  and delivery
• Serving new audiences

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MESL Management Committee

• Maxwell Anderson
• David Bearman
• Howard Besser
• Clifford Lynch
• Jennifer Trant

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MESL Participants (Museums/Repositories)

• Fowler Museum of Cultural History
• International Museum of Photography at George
  Eastman House
• Harvard University Art Museums
• Library of Congress
• Houston Museum of Fine Arts
• National Gallery of Art
• National Museum of American Art

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MESL Participants (Universities)

• American University
• Columbia University
• Cornell University
• University of Illinois
• University of Maryland
• University of Michigan
• University of Virginia

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MESL Working Groups

• Content Selection
• Documentation/Distribution
• Security and Monitoring
• Evaluation
• Faculty Training and Support
• Communications and WWW

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MESL Funding

• Each participant institution
• funds own ongoing activities
• Getty Information Institute
• funds Michigan Central Distribution activities
• funds participant meetings
• funds Project Director, Manager, and Clerical
  Asst
• Mellon Grant to UCB
• funds examination of cost and use of visual
  materials

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Timeline

• 9/94--Call for participation
• 11/94--Application deadline
• 12/94--Selection of participants announced
• 2/95--First participants meeting
• Summer/95--First distribution
• Fall/95--Courses taught w/MESL material
• Summer/96--Second distribution

• Summer/96--Mellon/MESL award announced
• 7/97--Project officially ends
• 1997/98--Universities to continue using MESL
  material w/o further distribution (pending
  contractual agreement)
• 11/97--Mellon datagathering ends
• 2/98--Final Mellon report due

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Project Constraints

• Extremely short lead-time before first
  distribution
• Need to rely primarily upon repurposing of
  existing data
• Existing Museum information is compiled for
  internal purposes
• Lack of standards for either text or image

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Metadata Issues (Text)

• Poor history of Museum standards
• Needs standards for
• fields
• controlled vocabulary
• data exchange

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Authority control over artist name

• Goya y Lucinetes, Francisco de (Houston)
• Goya y Lucientes, Francisco Jose de (Harvard)
• Goya, Francisco de (NGA)

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Fields in MESL Data Dictionary (1.1)

• 1. data agreement number
• 2. holding institution
• 3. accession number
• 4. accession method
• 5. credit line
• 6. label
• 7. object type/ objectclass/ object name
• 8. object title/caption
• 9. creator/maker - name
• 10. creator/maker - culture/nationality
• 11. creator/maker - role
• 12. creation place
• 13. creation begin date
• 14. creation end date
• 15. creation technique/method/process
• 16. material/medium

• 17. support
• 18. dimension/extent-quantity-unit
• 19. parts/pieces
• 20. marks/inscriptions
• 21. edition/state
• 22. associated events, people, organizations,
  places
• 23. concepts/subject
• 24. concepts/style-period
• 25. concepts/function
• 26. description
• 27. accompanying image - file name
• 28. accompanying image - caption
• 29. accompanying image - capture data
• 30. accompanying document - file name
• 31. accompanying document - type
• 32. version identification

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Standards Issues for Images

• Problems of lack of common vocabulary and
  standards.
• What size images to transmit?
• What format?

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MESL Images Characteristics
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MESL Images Capture Methods
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MESL Images Recommendations

• Need for common vocabulary and accepted
  standards.
• Need to distribute lossless images (probably
  TIFFs) so that subsequent derivative images
  involve only one lossy compression.

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MESL Images Open Issues

• Metadata for describing image technical
  specifications
• More study of image quality needs
• Can we recommend standard sizes to meet most user
  needs?
• Security issues
• Encryption
• Watermarking
• Encapsulation

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Issues Raised by MESL Deployment-

• Choice of Distribution Methods
• Delivery front-end search interface
• Image distribution/deployment
• Formats for structuring text
• Security
• Delivery deployment of clean consistent data

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Distribution vs. Deployment
Distribution
Deployment
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Decentralized Distribution
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Centralized Distribution
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Distribution Push vs Pull
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Issues Raised by MESL Deployment

• Choice of Distribution Methods
• Delivery front-end search interface
• Image distribution/deployment
• Formats for structuring text
• Security
• Delivery deployment of clean consistent data

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Delivery and Deployment of Clean Consistent
Data

• Getting clean data delivered from museums
• What standards to use
• Scaling and duplication of effort
• Centralized distribution functions

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Teaching issues

• Infrastructure
• New teaching approaches
• Creating New Image Sets (Views)
• Teaching tools

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Creating New Image Sets (Views)
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Creating New Image Sets (Views)
Removed due to use agreement restrictions
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Teaching Tools
Removed due to use agreement restrictions
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Teaching Tools

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• ltigtDate lt/igt January 20, 1997lt/h4gt
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• ltbgtASSIGNMENT lt/bgt Compare and contrast the two
  artists' representations

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Partnering

• Feedback mechanisms
• Agreement on proper deployment
• Site License contracts
• Potential long-term cooperative ventures
• Security

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Security Needs

• Authentication
• Encryption
• Watermarking
• Encapsulation

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Comparing the MESL Delivery Systems-

• User Interface
• Browsing
• Query options
• Retrieval
• Layout and display