Hi Sara,
I was responsible for the project that Trevor mentioned below, to digitise and publish to the web the early exhibition catalogues of the Royal Academy of Arts Winter Exhibition catalogues.
We undertook the project in two stages. In the first stage we digitised the catalogues from their inception in 1870 through to 1913. In addition to scanning the catalogues in their entirety, we used Optical Character Recognition software (OCR), to make a machine readable version of the text. At the same time, we worked with the RA Collections website designer, System Simulation Ltd, to develop a simple search screen to enable users to carry out free-text searching of the textual content, and also search by exhibition date and exhibition title. A browse facility was also added so that you can select an individual catalogue and browse through it page by page.
We didn't have any copyright issues with these catalogues, because a) they were all published by the Royal Academy, so we owned the copyright in them, and b) they didn't contain any images. (We did however enhance the visual side of the resource by adding thumbnail images linking to works from our own collection, and other institutional collections, that were included in the exhibitions. As this is an educational resource, we found most institutions were happy to let us use thumbnail images of their works, and link to pages on their collections' website about them).
In the 2nd phase we digitised the catalogues published between 1913 and 1939. During this period illustrated catalogues began to be published, containing black & white illustrations of many of the exhibited works. Again, the RA had published these catalogues, so we owned the copyright in them.
The main reason we chose to digitise and publish this particular series of catalogues is that we discovered that they are extremely scarce, with very few libraries holding complete runs of them. Consequently we have had generally very positive feedback about the site, particularly from researchers in the US and Europe where hard-copies of the catalogues are very difficult to find.
One major problem we had with the project was that the OCR results were very poor for the earlier exhibition catalogues, most likely because the quality of the print was often poor and the font sizes, etc were very variable. This meant that we had to do a lot of manual checking and correcting before the text was accurate to return meaningful results from searches. The OCR results for the 2nd phase were extremely good however.
Ideally we would have liked to build a more structured search inter-face, e.g. to mark-up the text in such a way to enable the user to search specifically by artists name, title of work, date of work, medium, etc, but funds and time did not allow for this. However, this is something we are looking in to for future iterations of the website.
Do get in touch if you have any specific questions about the project.
And here is a link to a blog giving an overview of the project:
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/blog/early-royal-academy-exhibition-catalogues-digitised-and-available-to-explore-on-the-ra-website,364,BAR.html
Best regards,
Adam
Adam Waterton
Head of Library Services
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London
W1V 0DS
T: 020 7300 5740 | F: 020 7300 5765 | E: [log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of REYNOLDS, Trevor [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 17 July 2013 06:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Digitizing Exhibition Catalogs
The Royal Academy has done this in a way I find very useful:
http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/pages/exhibition_list.html
Trevor Reynolds, Registrar
English Heritage, 37 Tanner Row, York, YO1 6WP
+44 (0) 1904 601905
________________________________________
From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sara Patrello [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 July 2013 20:56
To: REYNOLDS, Trevor
Subject: Digitizing Exhibition Catalogs
Apologies for the cross-posting.
Hi Everyone,
An idea of digitizing all of our exhibition catalogs has been thrown on the table. Has anyone done this before? What were the copyright/logistical challenges? The ideal would be to put the catalogs online eventually. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Sara Patrello
Assistant Registrar
Smart Museum of Art
The University of Chicago
5550 S. Greenwood Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
773.702.9549
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu<http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/>
The Land Beneath Our Feet: American Art at the Smart Museum
June 27–August 25, 2013
Other Modernisms: Serge Charchoune (1889–1975)
May 7–August 25, 2013
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