Final Report on the Academic Image Exchange Appendix F.
Distribution Services. Functional Specification
The following functional specification was developed at a
meeting of the AIC held at Yale University on 4 August 2000.
AIC collections will be disseminated on portable formats (e.g.
to institutions that wish to incorporate collections into local
systems environments) and via an online service supplied by the
AIC or by a contracted third party
Principles:
- Distribution by portable formats will support institutions
that wish to integrate AIC collections into local image databases
and image delivery services
- Distribution via online service will support a wider range
of institutions and individuals
F1. Dissemination by portable formats
AIC images and data will be distributed on portable media with
appropriate documentation
Where collections are developing, updated versions of them
will be distributed periodically to appropriate subscribers.
Updates will include images and data for collections in their
entirety
F2. Dissemination via online service supplied by the AIC or
by contracted third party
Principles
- The online service will supply functionality designed
principally to satisfy the needs of learning, teaching, and
research
- Service functionality will develop through time
- The online service will be available to users without
additional browser plugins
- For each image the online service will supply a minimum of
two resolutions - low and high resolutions, respectively
- A low-fidelity service (including low-resolution images
and brief metadata records) may be made available at no cost to
users
- A high-fidelity service including high resolution images,
full metadata records, and more advanced resource discovery and
presentation features will be made available to bona fide
subscribers
Image formats available from online service
- Low resolution image. Each image in the AIC's collections
will be available as a JPEG image supplying the best full-pixel
resolution permitted under copyright law and as consistent with
the AIC's business interests
- High resolution image. Each image in the AIC's collection
will be available as a 1024x768 JPEGs
- Higher resolution images. These may be made available where
supported by the underlying Master file and in a manner that is
consistent with the AIC's business interests
- Other formats. Wavelet compressed and other image formats may
also be made available for some images as part of an enhanced
online AIC service. Such formats may not be available at service
launch
Functionality of online service
More detailed functional requirement will be developed through
review of complementary and competing image services. The
following functional specification are offered as a minimal
starting point for that review
- Resource discovery
- Users will be able to search for and browse images within and
across the AIC's discrete collections
- Users will be able to search for images by fielded and
keyword searching. Search fields will be determined through
review of complementary and competing services
- Users will be able to browse for images according to canned
or prepackaged or canned categories. Prepackaged categories will
be determined for individual collections. Categories displaying
images from across collections may also be made available
- Result sets and their presentation
- Low-resolution images and brief metadata records will be
returned as brief results
- High-resolution images and full metadata records will be
available for images selected from brief results
- The service will support side-by-side presentation of images
(slide table function)
- Users will be able to select and sequence individual images
and associated metadata records and save them as named subsets or
groups. Users should be able to save side-by-side views as
objects in saved groups
- Users should be able to group metadata records as well as
images and their associated metadata
- Users should be able to present groups as slide shows
- Users should be able to export images and associated
metadata, side-by-side views, and groups, as HTML files
- Other
- If possible, the service should support users who wish to
integrate their own image content (and associated metadata) in
groups, slide shows, side-by-side views, etc.
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