FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Neil Kinnish
+44 (0)121 288 2528

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DIGITAL IMAGE COLLECTIONS – FREEING ASSETS FROM ARCHIVES
Museum’s web app frees high-res images from database archive to be used by public, academics and educational institutions.

http://www.preraphaelites.org

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In today’s digital environment despite concentrated efforts, many artifacts and artworks are still unavailable to the public and educational institutions. Having previously sat in storage rooms, works are now often found as redundant high resolution scans on private servers. Some institutions have adopted powerful image databases to catalog their high resolution images, ensuring artworks and artifacts are correctly archived and accessible internally for curators. The next progressive step for forward thinking institutions is to make their digital collections accessible to all.

Understandably, there are numerous challenges in achieving this goal; notably strict IT access policies, file size issues (high resolution scans are just not suited to standard html websites) and Digital Rights Management.

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (BMAG) faced these issues when they decided to publicly release their world-class Pre-Raphaelite collection, the largest in Europe. They already had a powerful image database system that cataloged previously unseen works but didn’t have a way to release them further. Fortunately they had a clear idea of what they wanted and the courage to pursue this goal. Together with assistance from JISC they appointed Birmingham-based digital agency TAK! Design after a five way pitch to design and develop a website application to achieve their goal.

Pete Nelson lead developer at TAK! notes, “We are all aware of the value of high quality content and many of the UK’s museums and art galleries are sitting on goldmines of digitized images and artifacts that could be utilized by schools, universities and the general public, but are simply not accessible. There are many stumbling blocks in getting these assets to a global audience, but if presented carefully they could benefit a huge number of people, raise the museums’ profiles and also bring in more visitors to see the artworks in person. It’s also about engaging users who would not previously be switched on to art history or likely to visit these institutions.”

Usability was a key issue–BMAG needed to know that, once released, the collection would engage all kinds of users with little assistance or technical knowledge.

Usability lead Dom Murphy explains, “There was the potential within the sheer scale of the site for users to easily become lost in process, never to return. Our goal at TAK! is to offer simple yet highly rewarding user experiences. We provided usability guidance and conducted a series of paper prototyping sessions where academics, students and everyday users were asked to explore a series of processes to see how they reacted and interacted. The results shaped the site into it’s current state. Improving interaction is an ongoing process and as such we expect to fine tune certain aspects of the site over the year.”

Key to the project’s success is the inclusion of a new technology developed by Microsoft called Deep Zoom which runs on their increasingly popular Silverlight free browser plug-in.

Neil Kinnish, Technical Director at TAK! championed the decision to use this software, “Deep Zoom allows views of artworks to be zoomed within the browser so that visitors can see individual brush strokes on the canvas. In effect the visitor is getting a closer experience of the work than in the gallery itself. This rich user experience is highly valuable in use as a learning resource. Deep Zoom essentially slices up the high resolution artwork and scales it many times so that the work can be streamed effectively over a standard broadband connection. In addition it means that, while the image is accessible to the user while online, it cannot be saved to their local computer which could present copyright infringments.”

The project also made use of other leading technologies to provide an engaging visitor experience. Lucene, a Google-like indexing engine was employed to provide lightning fast and effective searches across the entire catalogue, whilst .NET 3.5 and MVC were used to deliver a robust site framework. Perhaps the largest challenge was the importation of the data and re-processing it into a usable format, custom importation routines were built to handle this task specifically.

Kinnish adds, “This was pretty much an ideal project in terms of design and development. The client had an interesting brief and were keen to produce something above the ordinary. They were not scared to venture into new territory to achieve this end, and this has been key to the success of the site.”

JISC’s activities support education and research by promoting innovation in new technologies and by the central support of ICT services. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery offer world class museums in the cultural heart of England. TAK! Design specialize in Art, Design and Development. They are an independent digital agency based in Birmingham, UK yet they work with clients big and small from all around the world. Their previous work within the cultural sector has earned several awards and recognition.

“TAK! have helped us create the largest online Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world” concludes Linda Suprdle, Project Manager at BMAG. “It’s a fantastic resource and provides an unparalleled level of access and quality to the works on display. Anyone with an interest in art should visit the site and discover the importance of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

If you would like further information about this topic, promotional materials or schedule an interview please contact Neil Kinnish on 0121 288 2528 or through the site.