Managing NYU's Digital Image Collections

By Gregory Schnese

University art departments are undergoing radical changes as digital media gains popularity, raising questions about how best to store and manage growing digital collections. At NYU, we have selected Luna Insight as a promising solution. Insight is a computer program that allows individuals, departments, and institutions to store, manage, and display their digital media. This article briefly describes how Insight works, and how it is being implemented at NYU.

Recognizing the gradual shift from analog (non-electronic) media to digital media in the art history field, NYU's Department of Fine Arts (DFA) began investigating and evaluating potential software solutions, with the goal of ensuring a smooth transition. In 2002, the DFA selected Insight as their preferred solution and installed it on their departmental server. Thomai Serdari and Tim Donehoo worked with Luna Imaging to create the DFA's collection. Due to the success of Insight at the DFA, it was presented to the Digital Image Resource Initiative (DIRI), which focuses on the creation of new digital solutions for departments at NYU. The DIRI committee consists of members from the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), Department of Fine Arts, Information Technology Services (ITS), and Bobst Library.

Figure 1. The Insight interface allows you to browse image collections at a glance.

Insight is part of a four-program suite created by Los Angeles-based Luna Imaging. This suite comprises Insight, Inscribe, Studio, and Administrator Tools. Insight is used at NYU by students, professors, and staff members to view digital images, and is accessible via a Java client or a web browser. Inscribe and Studio allow staff members to upload digital media and data. The final program, Administrator Tools, is used to manage the database itself.

One of the major benefits of Insight is that it not only replicates, using digital media, the traditional side-by-side comparison of images, but also provides several enhanced features (described below). For the individual, Insight makes access to images easy and robust. Departments can manage and grow their own collections, edit information, and display links to outside sources. Institutions may also share their information with other departments and institutions.

Figure 2. Instructors can enhance classroom instruction by using Insight's side-by-side comparison tool, which offers zoom and pan options, among others.

IMPLEMENTING INSIGHT

As described above, the DFA was the first department to begin using Insight at NYU. The success of that collection attracted the attention of NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, and, as the IFA and DFA have similar collection requirements, it was easily determined that Insight would be a good solution to implement at the IFA, as well.

To support multiple departments, however, a more robust server and additional technical support were required. The eServices department within ITS agreed to host and monitor a new Insight server, as well as back-end software (Oracle) with enough power and memory to support many NYU departments.

With the hardware requirements covered, proper management was now required in order to support the departments. Towards this end, a new position, Digital Collections Assistant, was created to act as a liaison between the IFA, DFA, and ITS. Each department was responsible for developing a workflow that was best suited for their faculty and students. The Digital Collections Assistant supports each department, to ensure that their collections are maintained and available.

The availability of a central Insight server and the success of the joint effort of IFA, DFA, and ITS have encouraged more departments to begin using Insight. The most recent adopters are the Department of Photography and the Imaging Department at the Tisch School of the Arts. It is currently being used for several individual projects, as well.

Figure 3. Insight enables simple access to metadata (descriptive information) about each image.

BENEFITS & APPLICATIONS

Insight is a key tool for assisting instructors as they bring digital media into the classroom. It provides a long list of improvements over analog media displays. Faculty can create a slideshow in Insight that not only mimics the traditional technique of side-by-side comparison, but also provides a variety of enhancements not previously available. For instance, instead of being limited to the use of static slides to show a few details of a piece of art, instructors will now be able to zoom-in and pan across images on the fly, enabling the extraction of additional information from the image.

In addition, metadata (descriptive information) associated with every image may be viewed at will (see figure 3). This adds importantly to the educational experience, as all of the collective information that has been recorded for the image will always be available.

One particularly helpful application of Insight has been as a study aid for students. Before Insight was available, websites created to assist students would enable them to view images from within their classes on the NYU Blackboard online course management system. This method, however, would only benefit the particular class with which the images were associated. Now, using Insight, groups of images and virtual collections can be created from existing collections. Insight is already proving to be wildly popular; one class in the Spring 2006 semester received over 22,000 individual logins!

To grow collections with in supported departments, a faculty member may request that images be digitized and added to the database for a class. These images can then be arranged by lectures, allowing students to easily view the images at any time. The images are stored in the database, where they may be reused for other classes or for the same class.

NYU departments will enjoy the capability that Insight provides for easily customizing, growing, and backing up their collections. Using Insight, a department may choose to define a template that is customized to its needs. Insight's versatility potentially broadens its usefulness to many departments, not just those that specialize in art history. Insight accepts a wide variety of digital media including images, audio, and video, with the most common being slide scans and digital photography. Each department that uses Insight can be confident that their collections are routinely backed up by ITS.

Insight is available for students, staff, and faculty to browse NYU's image collections. To request an Insight account, please visit www.nyu.edu/luna/. For users or departments that wish to add media, please inquire by sending email to luna.help@nyu.edu.

[Please see the related news item on ARTstor, a collection of over 500,000 images for teaching and research.]