Dear AMICOs,

the following is the text of a discussion thread on ARLIS-L, the listserv of the Art Libraries Association, about AMICO.

Date:    Sat, 8 May 1999 11:58:22 EDT
From:    Paul Glassman <paulglassman@juno.com>
Subject: Responses to inquiry on digitized images for instructional use

----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear colleagues:

I am responding to Susan Clarke's suggestion that the responses to my inquiry be posted to the list. All of the replies so far have been thoughtful and comprehensive. They will be most helpful. I am including my inquiry at the beginning.

At 05:29 PM 5/5/99 -0400, you wrote:

>----------------------------Original message----------------------------

I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has participated in the delivery of digitized images for instructional use. The President of the school would like to see us migrate away from slides, and I would like to be able to provide a comprehensive set of questions to assist in evaluating our readiness for the idea. She is in particular recommending the Amico database. My preliminary questions are "How many of the Amico images dovetail with those in standard art and design history texts? To what extent are the design arts represented in the database? What percentage of the database contains images of architectural interiors? What are the startup costs for the delivery of the images into the classroom? How flexible is the arrangement of the images for instructional use?"

I am going to pursue a free trial period for evaluation and will also post this inquiry to the VRA listserv.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

--Paul Glassman, Librarian
  New York School of Interior Design
  170 East 70th Street
  New York, New York  10021
  (212) 472-1500 x216; FAX (212) 472-8175; e-mail:  paul@nysid.edu

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To: paulglassman@juno.com
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 09:55:58 -0400
Subject: Re: Digitized images for instructional use

Paul,

I recommend looking at the MESL report--Delivering Digital Images and Images Online plus Howard Besser's Mellon Study 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/).

Cornell participated in MESL and has chose not to participate with Amico. Our experience is that consortia such as Amico provide lots of images but not necessarily those you want to use for instructional purposes. They make their choices without real consultation with those in higher education who might use material in digital form for instructional purposes. Furthermore, it became clear at Howard Besser's session at VRA in LA that Amico is beginning to realize that the real market (i.e., the $$$) for projects such as Amico is probably at the K-12 level and in regional consortia such as OhioLink rather than by licensing to individual institutions of higher learning. The Making of America project reached the same conclusion.

That said, if the images Amico (or any other consortium) provides are what you want at a price you are willing to pay on an annual fee basis, then this might be a viable option. You will need to consider the cost of providing reliable support service to faculty members who will need to become comfortable with ever changing technology. You will also need to consider the cost of equipping and maintaining classrooms, computer labs, etc. In Howard Besser's report there is a chapter authored by Joanne Miller titled "The Cost of Distributing Analog Images by University Slide Libraries" which compares the cost of maintaining a traditional slide library vs providing images online.

My own guess is that for the time being, at least, both approaches will be necessary.

Margaret N. Webster Visual Resources Facility College of Architecture, Art & Planning B-56 Sibley Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3300

EMail:  mnw3@Cornell.edu

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We are doing projects at our library for courses and everybody got used to this kind of resources. The students asked now that all courses will use th this kind of use to view images. the url : http://www-lib.haifa.ac.il/www/art/course_material.html (all kind of projects using images). I am happy to help.

Ora Zehavi, Media Library, University of Haifa, Israel ora@lib.haifa.ac.il

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To: Paul Glassman <paulglassman@juno.com>
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 11:38:37 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Subject: Re: Digitized images for instructional use

Paul: We have been participating in the AMICO testbed over the past year.

AMICO has great promise -- it's a start. However, even though the database which will be offered next year will probably be about twice the size of the ca. 20,000-object database we were working with this year, it will not begin to meet your image needs. No commercially-available online image source currently available will do that; no -combination- of commercially-available online image sources that I know of will do that, either. To meet your specific institution's needs, you will have to supplement -- and at present, supplement heavily -- with images you acquire individually.

AMICO is made up entirely of the collections of the museums that are its members, and so it will never include images for objects that aren't in those museums' collections. At present, all of the members are North American museums. It will never be able to cover all of the images needed for a standard art history overview, because many of those objects are in European or non-member or private collections. It will never have much coverage of architectural interiors, because museums don't generally collect those. This may improve in future, but at present the design arts in general are poorly represented.

My feeling is that migrating away from slides is feasible if you have the budget. But you will have to provide many of the images needed for specific classes individually, either by scanning your own slides (and of course depending on where you got the slides, you may have to get permission for this) or by purchasing them individually from image dealers.

For the testbed, the cost of subscribing to AMICO was $8000. I assume it will be higher next year, but I don't know how much. This gives free access to all of your school's faculty, students, and staff. To deliver the images in a classroom, basically you need a network connection, a computer, and a digital projector. You can't really do much with arrangement of images with the RLG software that was used for the testbed. If you want to create specialized presentations, you can download the images into a web page or some presentation software, and arrange them within that.

Hope this helps.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dana Beth
Art & Architecture Librarian       Washington University
                                   Campus box 1061
dana-beth@library.wustl.edu        St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
1 (314) 935-5218                   USA
FAX: 1 (314) 935-4362
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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In general, I don't see how slides can be marginalized if there are no digital image databases that are of the size and completeness to take their place. Your institution has presumably assembled a slide collection that meets its teaching needs. Other institutions have simply digitized their slide collections, or parts of them, and offered them for internal network use only, with the assumption of fair use, for student review and access. Whether these images have also been translated into classroom use in place of the original slides is probably not as likely, although I am sure you will hear from academic institutions on this.

Ann

Ann B. Abid Head Librarian Ingalls Library The Cleveland Museum of Art 11150 East Blvd. Cleveland OH 44106 abid@cma-oh.org 216-421-7340 x537 216-421-0921 (fax)

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To: ARLIS-L@LSV.UKY.EDU
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 17:04:02 EDT
Subject: Re: Digitized images for instructional use

----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Paul,

You may be interested in the findings of the recently-published final report of the Mellon study on The Cost of Digital Image Distribution: The Social and Economic Implications of the Production, Distribution and Usage of Image Data. I was a member of the project team on this study. The report raised many issues and questions that are pertinent to your situation of contemplating converting to digital images for instructional use. Some of the major findings are summarized in the press release.

I've pasted the text from a message previously forwarded to ARLIS-L that includes a description of the report (see below). It gives a good overview of the context for the study and includes the URLs for the final report and press release. For your convenience, here is the URL to the press release: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon/99press-release. html.l