The Digital Images for Education project will make available over 500 hours of film clips – from Gorbachev’s accession to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 to the financial crisis of 2009, and including powerful raw footage of the 9/11 attacks as well as coverage of key issues such as deforestation and global warming.
A large and diverse collection of over 56,000 photographs will also be available, ranging from nineteenth-century life in the Scottish Highlands to contemporary youth culture.
The images have been selected by an expert community-led panel, to support teaching and lifelong learning in the following areas:
History
Social sciences (including politics, economics, education and the environment)
Science, engineering and technology
Art and creative industries (including images of buildings and works of art)
Geography (emphasising exploration and the changing world)
To enhance discovery and usage by the widest possible range of users, detailed metadata (prepared according to widely adopted standards to ensure interoperability) is being compiled for all images.
All images are copyright-cleared for use in education. This means that images can be used in course packs, virtual learning environments, e-portfolios and other multimedia works.
Commented Noel Williams, Professor of Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, “I think JISC has created what is pretty much a unique resource, exciting in its scope and potential. It touches on the interests of a wide range of subject areas, and contains images which will be of value to both teachers and researchers, and useful in all educational contexts - from colleges through to the highest levels of HE.”
Ten suppliers have been chosen, from academic and not-for-profit organisations such as the University of Brighton and the Royal Geographic Society, to commercial agencies such as Associated Press, ITN Source and Getty Images.
This important initiative is in support of the vision outlined in the Digital Images in Education report published in 2007:
“To provide the UK education community with long-term access to the digital image resources that it needs, in a variety of convenient, flexible and easy-to-use ways”.
As Professor David Baker, Chair of the JISC Content Services Committee, comments in the foreword to this report:
“The rise of the Internet and digital media has opened up significant possibilities for the delivery of message and meaning through visual rather than text-based media. The potential is enormous, but the challenge of realisation significant…The provision of access to collections and the ability to ensure their widespread and appropriate availability through easy-to-use yet sophisticated discovery tools is of paramount importance.”
Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, comments:
“The new images purchased as part of the Digital Images for Education initiative bring to life our history and capture, in particular, the key events of the past 25 years – from the death of Princess Diana to the election of Barack Obama. The images will complement our existing and highly popular collections – Newsfilm Online, Film and Sound Online and the Education Image Gallery – to provide the UK education community with a world class library of still and moving images covering the last 150 years.”
Image metadata
One of the most exciting initiatives from the project is the detailed metadata that will be included with the images. This includes GIS-enabled location coding, which means images can be linked to maps for retrieval by location. In addition, images will have a hierarchical subject coding, comprising the following top-level subject codes (the ITPC classification taxonomy is being used):
Arts, culture & entertainment
crime, law & justice
disaster and accident
economy, business and finance
education
environment
health
human interest
labour
lifestyle & leisure
politics
religion & belief
science and technology
social issues
sport
unrest, conflict & war
weather
To manage such a large collection, an XML-based “holding bay” is being created, enabling suppliers to load pictures for evaluation direct to a system that carries out a number of automated checks for metadata and technical quality. Individual images are then checked by hand for relevance, accuracy and content quality.
About Images for Education
The Digital Images for Education project will make available over 500 hours of film clips – from Gorbachev’s accession to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 to the financial crisis of 2009, and including powerful raw footage of the 9/11 attacks as well as coverage of key issues such as deforestation and global warming.
A large and diverse collection of over 56,000 photographs will also be available, ranging from nineteenth-century life in the Scottish Highlands to contemporary youth culture.
The images have been selected by an expert community-led panel, to support teaching and lifelong learning in the following areas:
To enhance discovery and usage by the widest possible range of users, detailed metadata (prepared according to widely adopted standards to ensure interoperability) is being compiled for all images.
All images are copyright-cleared for use in education. This means that images can be used in course packs, virtual learning environments, e-portfolios and other multimedia works.
Commented Noel Williams, Professor of Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, “I think JISC has created what is pretty much a unique resource, exciting in its scope and potential. It touches on the interests of a wide range of subject areas, and contains images which will be of value to both teachers and researchers, and useful in all educational contexts - from colleges through to the highest levels of HE.”
Ten suppliers have been chosen, from academic and not-for-profit organisations such as the University of Brighton and the Royal Geographic Society, to commercial agencies such as Associated Press, ITN Source and Getty Images.
This important initiative is in support of the vision outlined in the Digital Images in Education report published in 2007:
As Professor David Baker, Chair of the JISC Content Services Committee, comments in the foreword to this report:
Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, comments:
Image metadata
One of the most exciting initiatives from the project is the detailed metadata that will be included with the images. This includes GIS-enabled location coding, which means images can be linked to maps for retrieval by location. In addition, images will have a hierarchical subject coding, comprising the following top-level subject codes (the ITPC classification taxonomy is being used):
To manage such a large collection, an XML-based “holding bay” is being created, enabling suppliers to load pictures for evaluation direct to a system that carries out a number of automated checks for metadata and technical quality. Individual images are then checked by hand for relevance, accuracy and content quality.