Digitizing Initiatives

2004 Notes:

1. Paul Conway is director of information technology services of the Duke University Libraries. Mr. Comway's quote is from his article "Building the Digital Library @ Duke" in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue of the Duke University Libraries magazine.

2. eBooks are electronic versions of books that can be viewed on a computer screen. They can be made, according to the software publisher Adobe®, to allow or restrict printing of the contents and expire after a period of time. eBooks can be read out load by a computer, and enable highlighting, search and notes. Adobe®'s "eBook Central" page says "Adobe® eBook technology allows library patrons to borrow, download, and read offline a wide variety of titles on any computer running Microsoft® Windows® or Mac OS. Once a book is checked out, it can be accessed for a set amount of time, after which it is automatically deactivated, making it available for other patrons."

3. Creation of high quality Macromedia Flash presentations, specific to the needs of museums, will be made more affordable and easy to author by non-technical persons as a result of tPachyderm. The tool should eventually allow museum staff with limited budgets to create multimedia features for interactive learning on the Web. Museum staff will choose from several pre-designed Flash templates to create sophisticated Web presentations, such as those created by SFMOMA. In an undated template overview handout named Pachyderm Display Templates [acessed October 27, 2004], templates at one point under consideration included these screens:

• Context, a visual table of contents such as in the Ansel Adams page of SFMOMA's site -- which includes a seven-slide narrated slide show.
• Artwork, with artwork at its center, which allows a user to zoom in and pan on artwork images, plus link to subjects of further study.
• Zoom, which provides for zoom and pan plus audio commentaries and credit lines.
• Variety of Media, giving the look of a "coffee table book."
• Onion Skin, with multiple "layers" on a topic.
• Book Viewer, a document viewer for paper-based media such as books and manuscripts.
• Collaboration Web, showing relationships between artworks and artists
• Formal Analysis, a way of revealing close up details with related commentary.
• Slider Gallery, for a chronology or typology.
• Timeline, provides a way to enlarge artworks along a timeline with comparison functions.
• Comparison, which displays artworks by selected keywords and provides analysis.

In August, 2004 the Pachyderm team prepared a timing sequence for making templates. In order of priority:

• Context
• Artwork
• Variety of Media
• Enlargement (a name not included in the above list)
• Zoom
• Slider
• Collaboration
• Video Focus (a name not included in the above list)
• Book Viewer
• Formal Analysis
• Onion Skin
• Comparison

The Pachyderm 2.0 Project is comprised of team members from six Canadian and United States universities and five art museums located in the United States. Museum team members include education directors and curators. Testing of Pachyderm among the participating institutions is scheduled for 2005.

Go to:

Commercial Ventures

The eBook future

Related Non-Profit Organizations

Methods and Costs

Notes

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