Hi,
Attached is an excerpt from a recently published paper of mine describing
our particular dilemma and, hopefully, solution. The full paper can be
viewed at
http://www2002.org/CDROM/alternate/722/index.html
We have two servers, at this very
early stage of our project, one for the thinly populated prototype site
http://digimuse.cis.drexel.
edu,
and another where we can get really messy with development. As we move
forward (we just landed a $171,000 Barra Foundation grant for
retro-conversion) we plan to have all images (MOAC compliant JPEG web
files, uncompressed TIFF archival files, QTVR mov.) on a dedicated
server.
Since you are a neighbor, perhaps you'd like to have lunch
sometime?
Kathi Martin
Director, Drexel Digital Museum Project
[email protected]
- Naming Conventions
As the collection had not had a full time curator in some time, moved
between two locations and been accessioned by a variety of staff, three
different numbering systems were used as object identifiers in record
keeping. This posed a real dilemma in creating a unique identifier for
the objects in the collection that did not, in some cases, include the
universally accepted biblio-numeric (accession date.number of objects in
accession.sequence of object in accession).
Caroline R. Arms, in her report on Lessons and Challenges at the
Library of Congress (6) recommends establishing naming conventions
early in a digitizing project. The naming convention not only establishes
a unique, persistent identifier for each object in the collection, but
also can provide structure for project control.
We experimented with several formats that were combinations of the
designer name and number designators, none of which completely solved our
problem. A Museum Computer Network (MCN) list serve dialogue about naming
conventions supplied the following solution.
Naming conventions for files reflect CIMI (Consortium for the
Computer Interchange of Museum Information) recommendations and were
developed by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM): institutional
acronym_object ID_part designator.file extension. (7)
An
example provided by Snowden Becker, JANM, is: janm_97.77.31A_m.tif for
the master file (high-resolution TIFF image), and janm_97.77.31A_a.jpg
and janm_97.77.31A_t.jpg for derivative files and thumbnail files. JANM
uses the museum standard biblio-numeric as the objectss unique
identifier. Since not all of our records will have the biblio-numeric
(97.77.31A) as a unique identifier, Drexel Digital Museum (ddm) use a
systems generated number for the unique identifier: ddm_SYSGEN#_m.tif;
ddm_SYSGEN#_t.jpg; ddm_SYSGEN#_a.jpg. Another ID field is included for
those objects that do have the biblio-numeric. We will allow a null value
in this field.
We have 7 different file types stored in the image database.
Those that are freely accessible, via the world wide web, to the
public:
- §
3-d
panoramas (object movies), stored as
.mov
§ Thumbnails
(small files, limiting resolution) stored as .JPEG
§ Full
graphic of objects (medium files, limiting resolution) stored as
.JPEG
§ Full
graphic of details (medium files, limiting resolution) stored as
.JPEG
And those not freely accessible to the
public:
- §
Full
graphic of objects (large files, multipurpose resolution, 300 dpi) stored
as .TIFF
§ Full
graphic of details (large files, multipurpose resolution, 300 dpi) stored
as .TIFF
- §
Vector
files of patterns of selected garments (small files, vector files) stored
as .TIFF
The file extension itself designates which files are freely
accessible to the public (JPEG, MOV) and which we are using for archiving
purposes or as potential a revenue stream for the project (TIFF). We have
added an fg.JPEG and an fg.TIFF format to the image type options in the
file extension. Object movies are stored as, example:
ddm_SYSGEN#_a.mov.
If the images are front and back of a garment, we use _r and _v (for
recto and verso):ddm_SYSGEN#_r_m.tif. If there are multiple detail views,
we use a number and recto and verso designators as necessary:
ddm_SYSGEN#_r_d2.tif.
This system creates unique identifiers for the objects in the
collection, indicates the use of the file, provides some description of
the image and allows for the identification of the source of data
supplied to data repositories.
At 07:50 PM 6/4/02 -0400, you wrote:
Friends,
What image file naming conventions do you follow? Do you have
meaningful
file names or just sequential file names? Do you have image file
servers? If so, how have you structured these servers (by
department/section? image type? file format?).
Thanks for your thoughts,
Ruth Bryant Power
Database Administrator
University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
(215) 746 -6977
[email protected]
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