Volume 3. No 3 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Spring 1995

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Art Library Begins Mounting Collection on Computer

by Catherine Curran, Information Technology Publications

In the near future, when a geology student goes to the Art Library looking for pictures of volcanoes, Bonnie Holt won't have to paw through hundreds of slides and prints.

Instead, she will go to the computer and do a "volcano search ".

In a matter of seconds, several examples of artwork with volcanoes will be displayed on the screen.

Over the past two years, Bonnie Holt has been working to create a pilot database from the Art Department Slide Library. She has teamed with Information Technology to put the Art Library's collection of slides and mounted reproductions on computer. Using QBIC software from IBM and an XTerminal purchased with Instructional Use of Computing Funds, Holt -- with the help of a part-time research assistant -- has watched the library's digital database grow to over 1,000 images.

"IBM was looking for people to test its new QBIC software, " says Holt. "Joan Gargano (of I.T.'s Distributed Computing Analysis and Support) asked if we would be interested in participating in the project."

The answer, of course, was yes. And with the help of I.T. programmer/analyst Ken Weiss, Holt has added a digital dimension to her role as art librarian by using a scanner and computer to mount portraits, landscapes, sketches, and a variety of other genres on computer.

While the image database is still growing, the Art Library and its customers are already seeing the potential benefits:

• Freed from having to manually search through slides and prints, library staff will have more time to perform other duties.
• Slides, prints and other pieces will be spared wear and tear.
• Viewers will be treated to fresh perspectives since the software's searching capabilities allow them to instantly compare works in a variety of ways (e.g. by artist, period, and subject).

Short for Query by Image Content, QBIC indexes artwork by text, shape, texture, color, and object. Textual information is being added to the database, and eventually each image will be labeled with the artist's name, date, medium, and dimensions.

"I think what's really interesting about having the images on computer is the surprise element, " says Stacey Vetter, a graduate student who is assisting with the project. "You can do a search by shape and find a whole set of paintings you didn't think fit into the category. "

"For instance, rape is a recurring theme in art, even though paintings are rarely labeled as such. With the digital database, someone researching the topic could use a reclining figure to search by image and identify paintings that may fall into the category, " says Vetter.

Searches can be specific or general. You can ask the computer to display all images with a red ball in the top right hand corner. Or, you can be more general, and draw an oval shape in hopes of finding a wide variety of portraits.

Because of its ability to categorize artwork in a variety of ways, the database will be useful to faculty who teach technique as well as to art historians who will be able to use the data to show how different images are depicted through time.

Judging from previous requests, the Art Department thinks its digital library will be useful to people in other disciplines as well. For example:

• The Physical Education department has requested images of women for dance instruction.
• Faculty in the School of Veterinary Medicine have requested images of animals to illustrate lectures.
• Sociologists have requested portraits to show how people of race and gender have been depicted in different eras.
• Geology students have requested images of volcanos.

These are the kinds of requests that inspired the librarians to pursue the image database project.

Located on the second floor of the Art Building, the Art Library is open Monday - Thursday from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., and Friday from 9 - 11:30 a.m. For more information on the image database, call 752-0152.