Elaine Ménard

Digital image description: a review of best practices in cultural institutions

Purpose – This paper aims to present the results of the first phase of a research project aiming to develop a bilingual taxonomy for the description of digital images. The objectives of this extensive exploration were to acquire knowledge from the existing standards for image description and to assess how they can be integrated in the development of the new taxonomy.Design/methodology/approach – An evaluation of 150 resources for organizing and describing images was carried out. In the first phase, the authors examined the use of controlled vocabularies and prescribed metadata in 70 image collections held by four types of organizations (libraries, museums, image search engines and commercial web sites). The second phase focused on user‐generated tagging in 80 image‐sharing resources, including both free and fee‐based services.Findings – The first part of the evaluation showed that each resource presented comparable information for the images or items being described. Best practices and implementation prov...

Digital image access: an exploration of the best practices of online resources

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the first phase of a research project that aims to develop a bilingual interface for the retrieval of digital images. The main objective of this extensive exploration was to identify the characteristics and functionalities of existing search interfaces and similar tools available for image retrieval. Design/methodology/approach – An examination of 159 resources that offer image retrieval was carried out. First, general search functionalities offered by content-based image retrieval systems and text-based systems are described. Second, image retrieval in a multilingual context is explored. Finally, the search functionalities provided by four types of organisations (libraries, museums, image search engines and stock photography databases) are investigated. Findings – The analysis of functionalities offered by online image resources revealed a very high degree of consistency within the types of resources examined. The resources found to be the ...

TIIARA: the “making of” a bilingual taxonomy for retrieval of digital images

Purpose – This paper aims to present the results of the second phase of a research project aiming to develop a bilingual taxonomy for the description of digital images. The objective of this second stage entailed the formal structuring of the taxonomy. It involved the choices of top‐level categories and their subcategories.Design/methodology/approach – The taxonomy development process consists of several steps that are iterative in nature, and, as such, an incremental user testing needed to be carried out in order to validate and refine the taxonomy components. For the first validation phase, the card sorting technique was used. To increase the value of the testing, two different sorting exercises were performed by ten respondents, who completed feedback forms to provide comments and suggestions.Findings – The analysis of the data provided by the card sorting exercises and the feedback forms highlighted the difficulties participants encountered using the taxonomic structure. This step was especially usefu...

Ordinary image retrieval in a multilingual context: A comparison of two indexing vocabularies

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine image retrieval within two different contexts: a monolingual context where the language of the query is the same as the indexing language and a multilingual context where the language of the query is different from the indexing language. The study also aims to compare two different approaches for the indexing of ordinary images representing common objects: traditional image indexing with the use of a controlled vocabulary and free image indexing using uncontrolled vocabulary.Design/methodology/approach – This research uses three data collection methods. An analysis of the indexing terms was employed in order to examine the multiplicity of term types assigned to images. A simulation of the retrieval process involving a set of 30 images was performed with 60 participants. The quantification of the retrieval performance of each indexing approach was based on the usability measures, that is, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of the user. Finally, a questionnaire ...

Faceted Classification for Museum Artefacts: A Methodology to Support Web Site Development of Large Cultural Organizations

Purpose – This research project aims to provide a new visual representation of the Artefacts Canada digital collection, as well as a means for users to browse this content. Artefacts Canada Humanities is a database containing approximately 3.5 million records describing the different collections of Canadian museums.Design/methodology/approach – A four‐step methodology was adopted for the development of the faceted taxonomy model. First, a best practice review consisting of an extensive analysis of existing terminology standards in museum communities and public web interfaces of large cultural organizations was performed. The second step of the methodology entailed a domain analysis; this involved extracting and comparing relevant concepts from terminological authoritative sources. The third step proceeded to term clustering and entity listing,which involved the breaking‐up of the taxonomy domains into potential facets. An incremental user testing was also realized in order to validate and refine the taxon...

SINCERITY: the making of a search engine for images indexed with a bilingual taxonomy

Purpose – This paper aims to present the third stage of a research project that aims to develop a bilingual interface for the retrieval of digital images. The requirements and implementation of the search engine are described. Image search engines attempt to give access to a range of online images available on the web. Design/methodology/approach – The strategy of using open-source software components as much as possible was chosen for the advantages of this approach: low initial cost and accessibility to evaluate and develop enhancements independently and driven by research objectives rather than financial viability. Findings – Open-source software components can be used to develop the interface. The implementation of the image search engine and its indexes uses: Apache Solr, AJAX-Solr, jsTree and jQuery. Microsoft Translator web service was integrated into the interface to provide the optional user query translation. Originality/value – The search interface is intended to be an innovative tool for image...

Two solitudes revisited: a cross-cultural exploration of online image searcher's behaviors

This paper presents and discusses the results of the second phase of the project that aims to investigate the roles and usefulness of search characteristics and functionalities used for image retrieval in a bilingual context, from the users point of view. The difficulties encountered by image searchers are described. Finally, suggestions to be integrated in a search interface model are presented. This exploratory study provides an understanding of how users with different linguistic and cultural background search for images.

A Second Life for TIIARA: From Bilingual to Multilingual!

Multilingual controlled vocabularies are rare and often very limited in the choice of languages offered. TIIARA (Taxonomy for Image Indexing and RetrievAl) is a bilingual taxonomy developed for image indexing and retrieval. This controlled vocabulary offers indexers and image searchers innovative and coherent access points for ordinary images. The preliminary steps of the elaboration of the bilingual structure are presented. For its initial development, TIIARA included only two languages, French and English. As a logical follow-up, TIIARA was translated into eight languages—Arabic, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, German, Hindi and Russian—in order to increase its international scope. This paper briefly describes the different stages of the development of the bilingual structure. The processes used in the translations are subsequently presented, as well as the main difficulties encountered by the translators. Adding more languages in TIIARA constitutes an added value for a controlled vocabulary meant to be used by image searchers, who are often limited by their lack of knowledge of multiple languages.

Image retrieval with SINCERITY: A search engine designed for our multilingual world!

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a search engine dedicated to image retrieval in a bilingual (French and English) context. This paper presents the first phase of user testing that was carried out to validate and refine SINCERITY, the new search device. Design/methodology/approach – This first phase of the search engine testing involved a small group of image searchers (10 French-speaking and 10 English-speaking participants) who were asked to retrieve a sample of images (30) using the new tool. A questionnaire was also developed to compile the comments of the users. Findings – The results of this first phase of testing revealed that even though image indexing was sometimes problematic, the participants did not encounter major difficulties retrieving images with SINCERITY. Comments and suggestions received will be taken into consideration to improve the performance and aesthetics of the search engine. Originality/value – Once fully operational, SINCERITY will allow users to search images i...

Image Indexing and Retrieval: Challenges and New Perspectives / Indexation et repérage d'images : défis et nouvelles perspectives

The Web constitutes a gigantic source for the image hunter who is looking for either illustrative or learning material. However, given the possibility of multiple interpretations of the visual resources available, many difficulties tend to complicate retrieval. Current research on image indexing and retrieval focuses on numerous areas, but from machine methods for image searching to cognitive aspects of image perception and understanding, there are still a number of theoretical and practical questions to be addressed.