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Embedded Metadata
Metadata plays a critical role in the management and use of digital content. Comprehensive and consistent metadata allows users to find the content they are seeking, to identify, understand, and differentiate the content, and to know whether restrictions apply to its use. Technical metadata can provide information on the technical characteristics of the digital object (pixel dimensions, file encoding and compression, etc.),as well as some information on how it was created. Technical information increases interoperability of the content and provides a basis for evaluating the viability of a digital object or its suitability for reformatting.
Current Projects/Reference Material
Categories and Objectives
This subgroup has drafted objectives for the digital reformatting of printed matter, documents and manuscripts, pictorial and fine art content. Why are reformatted copies of such content being made? What uses will these copies support? Do these considerations vary from one content category to another? As its work proceeded, the subgroup identified a number of content categories, defined in terms of the "physical" items found in many library and archive collections. Each category is associated with reformatting objectives, i.e., the objectives of the organizations that carry out the digitizing and, equally important, the objectives of the endusers who will consult or use the images in their work. These objectives are expressed as use cases: they name an actor (in a certain role) and an action that represents a use of the image. The specifications to be recommended by the Still Image Working Group are intended to guide the production of images that achieve the stated objectives.
Current Projects/Reference Material
Archival Color
Color is one of the most challenging areas of digital imaging for archival purposes. Unlike several other areas of imaging performance and quality, color is a perception of the environment that depends on the color stimulus as well as the viewing conditions and cannot always be captured adequately in the imaging process. Further complicating the field is the variety of color spaces which can be used to encode the data from the imaging process. Several of these issues are listed in the Still Image Working Group Gap Analysis.
To address this challenge, the Still Image Group is collaborating with the CIE Technical Committee on Archival Colour Imaging. This committee (TC 8-09: Archival Colour Imaging) was created with the objective of recommending "a set of techniques for the accurate capture, encoding and long-term preservation of colour descriptions of digital images that are either born digital or the result of digitizing 2D static physical objects including documents, maps, photographic materials and paintings.
The CIE and the Still Image Group initially will concentrate on practical solutions that concentrate on existing RGB and other tristimulus-based methods to encode the data from imaging of content in a manner that has a known accuracy, can create an accurate representation of the object when displayed, and where the encoding model is sustainable.
Last Updated: 02/17/2010