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RLG and Preservation

"Automatic Exposure"—Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images

This RLG-led initiative investigates implementation strategies for NISO Z39.87: Data Dictionary - Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images, now a draft standard for trial use. Z39.87 defines a comprehensive set of data elements that are key to an institution's ability to manage and preserve its digital images. With "Automatic Exposure," we are seeking to minimize the cost of acquiring such data and to maximize long-term access to it. The project engages both manufacturer-vendors and cultural heritage professionals to determine how digital repositories and asset management systems can be supplied with technical metadata that is automatically captured by high-end scanners and digital cameras. The Digital Library Federation, Museum Computer Network, and former CIMI consortium have all expressed support for this effort.

Possible outcomes include:
—A dialog between manufacturers and cultural heritage institutions to improve the automatic capture of technical metadata during the digitization process.
—Identification and/or creation of tools that aid technical metadata extraction, encoding, and transmission.
—A crosswalk (a mapping between the elements of two standards) between NISO Z39.87 and the elements of industry specifications such as TIFF (pdf), EXIF, and DIG35.

Updates

April 2004
On April 23 Günter Waibel will present a paper on the Automatic Exposure initiative at the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) archiving conference in San Antonio, Texas.

March 2004
On November 5, 2003, RLG and the National Information Standards Organization convened a meeting in Las Vegas (in conjunction with the Museum Computer Network conference) to discuss a white paper from RLG on Automatic Exposure and to plan next steps. Representatives came from Adobe Systems, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Harvard University, Kirtas Technologies, Museum of Modern Art, Sinar Bron Imaging, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Calgary. Outcomes included:

—Automatic Exposure Project meeting results:
Meeting minutes (pdf) plus "XMP: Adding Intelligence to Media" (pdf), a presentation by Gunar Penikis, Adobe Systems Incorporated

—Revised RLG white paper by Günter Waibel and Robin Dale: Automated Exposure: Capturing Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images (pdf)

—White paper appendices:
Appendix 1,"Industry initiatives for self-decribing objects and metadata transfer," is part of the paper itself; appendices 3-5 are courtesy of Kodak and reprinted with permission from Eastman Kodak Company):
     2: Mapping Z39.87 to DIG35, TIFF 6.0, and EXIF 2.2 (pdf)
     3: Kodak's Professional Camera Metadata Survey, 2002 (pdf )
     4: Kodak's 2002 Consumer Digital Camera Metadata Survey (pdf )
     5: Kodak's 2003 Consumer Digital Camera Metadata Survey (pdf )

August 2003
In July, RLG program officers Robin Dale and Günter Waibel put out a widely distributed call for interest in working with camera and scanner vendors to make metadata capture automatic during digitizing. At the same time, they asked cultural heritage institutions about their existing technical metadata practices. Over 100 responses have demonstrated strong interest and provided information both for identifying stakeholders and for determining common metadata practices. Based on analysis of this information, we anticipate convening an invitational meeting of vendors and institution experts in November 2003.

Comments, ideas, interested? Please contact:
Günter Waibel, Program Officer (guenter.waibel@notes.rlg.org)
Robin Dale, Program Officer (robin.dale@notes.rlg.org)

Find more at RLG's digital preservation home page.

Last updated 3 March 2004

This site was frozen in 2004 and is now out of date. Please go to RLG's current Web site for all information. Questions? Contact us.

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