Digital Images for the Information Professional,

Citation

(2009), "Digital Images for the Information Professional,", Records Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2009.28119bae.002

Digital Images for the Information Professional,

Digital Images for the Information Professional

Article Type: Professional resources From: Records Management Journal, Volume 19, Issue 2

M. Terras,Ashgate,Aldershot,2008

Keywords: Information profession, Image databases, Internet, Images

Technology continues to change the professional landscape of the Information Professional, be that professional work in an archive, gallery, museum, library, or office environment. As digitizing equipment and electronic storage have become “less expensive” the pressure to have an ever-increasing array of material available online has increased exponentially. The increased pressure to provide images leaves very little time for the Information Professional to wax philosophical about her or his chosen profession or to contemplate the history of digital imagery its relationship to other technologies.

When the professional does have a moment to pause and contemplate these things, there are a variety of resources to which one can turn, all of which can offer a minutia of detail, often written in technically inaccessible prose. The most recent addition is Digital Images for the Information Professional by Melissa Terras, a senior lecturer in Electronic Communications at the School of Library, Archives, and Information Sciences at UCL. Terras’ early academic career was in the humanities and her work since has been on converging the worlds of the arts and humanities with those of computer science and engineering which put her in a unique position to act as the Information Professionals guide through the world of digital imagery.

The reader is presented with a tightly packaged, highly structured book broken into eight chapters and reading suggestions at the end of each chapter. The book provides a series of short histories of image and humanity, of the digital imagery and interlocking technologies, before moving on to highly useful explanations of image file formats and image metadata construction as a comprehensive overview of current issues in digital imaging.

There is also a lengthy chapter on “Digital Images and the Memory Institution”, which will provide a thought-provoking read, especially for those working in an Memory Institution environ. This chapter mimics the over-arching breakdown of the book’s structure itself moving from the early “pre-web” years of digitization on through the evolution of digitization standards and guidelines. Additionally, Terras also provides an in-depth assessment of the resources available through the standards bodies, to which one can and should go to for assistance. The book is written in such a way that the individual chapters can be read on their own or read in its entirety.

Terras’ work does not just concentrate on the evolution of digital imagery from a Information Professional standpoint but also takes on the strides made in the realms of the internet and Web 2.0 as well as in personal image capture. In Chapter 6 “Personal Digitized Image Collections”, Terras provides an interesting social commentary on the changes in how human relationship with image capture. Additionally, the author raises concern over how the increased capacity for image capture and the increased accessibility of capture devices is creating serious ramifications over storage, accessibility to the images

Though not written in excessive technical language, Digital Images does not go to the other extreme of patronizing the reader. Terras has struck a rather beautiful balance between sharing her knowledge and providing background to a curious traveler in the world of digital images while keeping the traveler engaged. There are few books on digital images few that use layman’s terms to investigate the history of imaging technologies, the basics of digital imagery or the issues around imagery access and preservation as Terras does.

If there is any drawback to the volume, it would be that though the book claims to be for the information profession writ large, the majority of its underpinnings appear to be from within the Memory Institution and from within the HE and FE sectors. This is a but a minor drawback as Terras goes to great lengths to point out the connections in early digitization projects between the companies developing the image capture and storage technologies and the institutions with the collections that were ripe to utilize these technologies. These early relationships have set a precedent for continued collaboration, each side bringing to the table an essential component to a digitizing initiative. This is perhaps one of the most important and underplayed points of the entire book: that digital imagery as we know it today couldn’t exist without collaboration and cooperation between the public an private sectors.

If there were a second drawback to the book that immediately stands out it would be the cost. Digital Imaging for Information Professionals is priced between £52.25 and £60, making it a substantial purchase for an individual or a smaller institution to make. It is a purchase that should be made but unless it is widely marketed and its profile is raised outside the usual remit of journals and, I do not see it gaining the wider audience that it deserves.

Digital Images for the Information Professional is a welcome addition to the literature available to those engaged in the business of creating, managing, and distributing digital images, as well as to anyone with a curiosity about the history and future of digital imagery.

Rachel Howse BinningtonRGM Advisors UK Ltd, London, UK