From the card catalogue to the image catalogue. Project “Digital Image Archive”

The Picture Archive is Austria’s largest pictorial documentation center and the center for orderings of digital images of all collections of the Austrian National Library. Its holdings comprise more than 1.5 million pictures focussing on historical portraits, architecture, topography and history of Austria.

The project’s main target was to create an efficient model for a “Digital Image Archive”, which is based on the existing organizational structures of the collection. Tradtitional services should be supplemented by new, digital services. Electronic image catalogues and presentations should increase the availability of the objects of the collection for scientific as well as commercial usage.

Initial Status

A major part of the project was to find efficient proceedings and tools for preparing and efficiently importing the scanned data and its adaptation for use in the future image database. A structural analysis of the catalogue resulted in a rather complex requirement profile and made clear that using OCR and processing data manually might represent an obstacle for a positive outcome of the project. On the basis of the analysis a concept was developed.
Data Analysis
The digital image catalogue is based on the typewritten card catalogue of the Picture Archive of the Austrian National Library comprising about 1.2 million cards.
The catalogue is built as a dictionary catalogue (combining author and subject heading catalogues). The cards can be divided into 3 types according to their function (header card, index card, pointer card) and into 3 categories according to their content (person, subject, topography).

Digitization of the catalogues and software development

A thorough analysis of the archive’s structures led to the development of a concept for the Image Database. From August 1999 to October 1999 all catalogues of the Picture Archive were digitised.
In cooperation with the Central Informatics Service and based on an indepth structural analysis of the card catalogue, a cataloguing software was developed, which enables the indexing of millions of catalogue cards via web-interface in very short time.
The result was an extension of the “Katzoom” software, developed by the Austrian National Library for the electronical reproduction of card catalogues in the internet. An index was developed according to its documentary structure, dividing people, places and subject keywords.

Indexation
In April 2000 an indexing team consisting of five people began with the indexation of the scanned integral catalogue. First, the type of card was determined for each new keyword appearing in the alphabetical order of the cards. By a simple click on the corresponding card category the input mask was opened and the correct type of card was already marked. Then the input fields were filled in. In the case of persons, dates of birth and death were indexed in addition to names. Where topographics were concerned, area codes and classifications were indexed, too.

This system of marking and dividing enabled an efficient processing of the cards for the import into the image database (separating header and index cards, creating a topographical thesaurus as well as an index for people and subject keywords, and removing pointless pointer cards etc.).
After completing the form of the input mask, the indexing person would close the input mask window. As the index keywords would then be automatically attributed to the following cards, as long as no new index keyword was written into the input field of the input mask, not every single card but only the cards with different keywords had to be worked on. A second index level was built in where there were more than 400 index cards in a row.
The average daily indexing rate per person could be increased from 800 cards per day to about 3500 per day. On November 10th, 2000 all catalogues of the Picture Archive had been indexed, corrected and prepared for the import into the Image Database.

Image database

When the digitization of the catalogue had been finished, the electronic card catalogue (index lists and cards) had to be integrated into a functioning image database. Virtual visitors of the Picture Archive should get the opportunity to do individual searches free of charge, to build their own individual database, to save their search results and to order selected objects online.
After a comprehensive test procedure, it was decided to use STAR, a database software developed by the American company Cuadra. STAR allows an integration of various databases and is intended to standardize the different special databases of the Austrian National Library.

Internet presentation

Design and storyboard for an independent internet presentation of the Picture Archive was developed by Pixelwings Medien AG and is accessible via the URL www.bildarchiv.at.

A press conference on July 12th, 2001 represented the official launch of the online „Digital Image Archive“. Since then a test version has been available to internet users. Subsequently, a concept had to be developed which comprised on demand services as well as an accompanying object digitization.

Object digitization

Preservational aspects have to be regarded as a decisive factor for high resolution scans of original archival material. Therefore the requirements for a scanner were to be able to digitize all sorts of objects in an automized, quick, user-friendly way in the highest possible quality. Thorough considerations led to the decision that the HIT-Vario digital camera of the Homrich company would be the most appropriate product und it was bought in November 2001.

This reproduction unit is the only one of its kind in Austria and the library is now able to do systematic digitization of image objects of all kinds in archival quality as well as on demand digitization of any object contained in the image database within 3 days. All scanned image data are directly imported into the image database and are available immediately.

This device is able to digitize all kinds of originals (prints or slides, sizes from microfilm to format A0, glass plates, delicate graphics, three-dimensional objects) in a – to a large extent – automized way. During the scan process the objects are not touched and the use of UV filters minimizes preservational concerns concerning light exposure. The possibility to use batch processes for objects and meta data is also an important precondition for a cost reduction within the digitization process.

Results and future prospects

The project „Digital Image Archive“ has put the Austrian National Library in a leading position for national and international participations and it has been incorporated as positive example into the DigiCULT project study. Within the EU project REGNET the platform of the picture archive is integrated as test system and is Europe-wide accessible. Since December 2001 a national internet platform under the heading of the Austrian National Library is being built. Within two years 40.000 pictures from four Austrian institutions will be digitized as archival scans and made accessible via the internet platform of the Picture Archive for educational as well as for commercial purposes.

The development of automized processes is the only way to reach a transfer rate which allows the digitization and indexation of huge numbers of objects in high quality, with small personnel expenditure within a reasonable period of time.