Dear colleagues,

Images in Focus: Organizing Visual Content for Use

ISKO UK would like to remind you that its next afternoon event turns its attention to the organization of images.       

Though largely confined to text-based resources through much of its history, Knowledge Organization has always had to cope with visual materials. Art galleries, photo libraries, film and video collections have hitherto largely 'done their own thing', adapting techniques designed for textual resources to visual content. However, it can be argued that communication today places as much emphasis upon visual materials as upon text and that visual materials need special attention.

The rise first of film and then television, has accelerated the growth of visual content beyond imagination. With the more recent digital revolution, the emergence of the World Wide Web as a global 'library', and with 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, the need to develop improved approaches to cataloguing and indexing of visual content has become even more urgent.

The first session examines some examples of current best practice: in image collection cataloguing, in IPR management for images and in the use of a standards-based approach to a national film collection. Speakers will include Tom Gillmor of the Mary Evans Picture Library, Sarah Saunders of Electric Lane and Gabriele Popp & Stephen McConnachie of the British Film Institute.

In the second session, Paul Davies (Junction Media), Tilo Burghardt (BBC Natural History Unit/Bristol University) and Sam Davies (BBC R&D) will describe how computer-based image analysis and crowdsourcing techniques are being investigated as a means of by-passing the bottleneck posed by the need for human cataloguing and indexing. The afternoon will end with a brief Q&A session followed by our customary networking opportunity with wine and nibbles.

The event takes place on Wednesday 28^th November at the British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 8YS. You will find the programme and other details of the event, and can register until November 23rd, on the ISKO UK site at http://www.iskouk.org/events/Images_in_focus_Nov2012.htm.

The event is free to ISKO members and to full-time students. The fee for non-members is just £40. All fees must be paid in advance - there is no provision for payment on arrival. Registration opens at 1.30 and we shall start promptly at 2 p.m. Please pass this invitation on to any colleagues who may be interested.  We hope to see you there.

Refreshments are kindly sponsored by Adlib and Wine & Nibbles by Imprezzeo.

ISKO is a not-for-profit scientific/professional association with the objective of promoting research and communication in the domain of knowledge organization, within the broad field of information science and related disciplines. Founded in 2007, our UK Chapter has been attracting lively and steadily growing audiences to its afternoon meeting series (see slides and recordings at http://www.iskouk.org/events.htm) as well as its very successful second biennial conference (http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/index.htm) last year.

Best regards

ISKO UK publicity