Digital libraries : a focus on image repositories : perspectives on an archive creation

Abstract

The new digital technologies made real the convergence of ideals and tools, but with it brought troubles and questions to solve. The inovation created digital libraries, repositories of information now available in any part of the world, intricate search engines filled with complex metadata all of it bringing cooperation to a new level. Image repositories have particular dificulties from other type of archives and are relegated to a secundary role or even forgotten over text digital archives, this needs to be changed. I go through all the stages, from metadata methods, to the questions of acess, funding, web 2.0 Mashing up for tool improvement and the dificult copyright issues; in the intent of providing enough information and methodology to change even a little bit the present state of digital image repositories. The practical example used is a image repository created for the University of Coimbra that gains from the expertise of database software and the methodology, with the objective of showing how to put all the methods into practice in a good way, and explain cliffs and errors that can be avoided.