My colleagues in Photography are seeking an image cataloguing and
management system that will enable them to catalogue and retrieve images
from a collection that currently numbers around 10,000 images and is
expected to grow to several times this number over the next few years.
Additionally we want to be able to extend the system to classify
additional multimedia files such as audio and video.
We assign a wide variety of different characteristics to the images
reflecting the interests of the many curatorial departments in the
Museum. This enables us to retrieve images that may for example be of an
axe head of flint found in a particular location relating to a
particular culture from a particular time period. Each department has
its own particular set of preferred descriptors and while there is some
commonality many of the descriptors are specific to particular
departments.
This creates a wide range of possible identifiers which makes recording
- and maintaining - the image descriptions difficult and time consuming.
We have been considering the possibility of using metadata embedded in
the images to enable us to classify and store the images and would
appreciate any comments about how practical this might be in a museum
context? The software we are currently considering is called Fotoware
which conforms to IPTC standards though I'm not sure how well this maps
onto the data we might need to store.
If anyone has any comments that they could share - either on or off list
as appropriate - I'd be delighted to hear from you.
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