Hello everyone, A recent article in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology reports on a study examining the characteristics of user queries in image retrieval. For example, the researcher might categorize a participant's search need as a need to find a specific person, object, or event in images. The study looked at natural language statements and the terminology actually used when searching an image retrieval system.
This study also asked participants about the relevance of the textual descriptions accompanying the retrieved images. That is, researchers asked users to rate the importance or relevance of (our) textual descriptions. (Do the textual descriptions accompanying the images help you decide if the image is relevant to your needs?) Note: Participants in this study are specialists in American history and the image collection is the Library of Congress's American Memory project. The article also provides a brief review of other recent studies on user queries in image retrieval. The article might interest those of us -- like Marla and her colleagues at SFMOMA -- planning and providing online access. Here is the citation: Youngok Choi and Edie M. Rasmussen, "Searching for Images: The Analysis of Users' Queries for Image Retrieval in American History," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54, no. 6 (2003): 498-511. Layna White Collections Information Manager Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts UCLA Hammer Museum Co-chair, MCN Standards/Controlled Vocabulary SIG 310-443-7078 [email protected] www.hammer.ucla.edu -----Original Message----- From: Marla Misunas [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 11:16 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Subject categories for museum website Hi everyone, At SFMOMA we are continuing to work on getting our collections information on-line. In the past, in addition to searchable label information in-house, we have used only the most basic keywords to identify objects, like painting, drawing, photograph. But we want to give visitors other ways into the collections and we could use some advice. Do you have broad categories that you use at the top level of your website's collections hierarchy? The ones that always come to mind are things like landscape, portrait, abstract; or religious art, historical scenes, etc.; but surely there's more creative thinking out there. Any comments or ideas are welcome, including ideas of other websites we might visit. thanks! Marla Misunas Manager, Collections Database Collections Information and Access San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 415 357 4186 voice 415 947 1186 fax http://www.sfmoma.org Board Member, Museum Computer Network Conference Chair, Las Vegas, 2003 http://www.mcn.edu --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected]
