Capture Your Collections: Small museum version
Metadata

Many guidelines are available that you may wish to consult on information standards. These include Spectrum, the Categories for the Description of Works of Art, the Federated Guide to the Description of Architectural Drawings, Object ID, the Visual Resources Association Core Categories, the RLG Reach Element Set and others.

It is recommended that you use structured vocabularies, lexicons, and authority lists to describe the objects in your images. This is key to providing consistent access and retrieval of your images. The Art & Architecture Thesaurus, is one example of a structured vocabulary that can help standardize the content of fields such as materials, technique, school/style, and object name/type in humanities databases. You may have created an authority list for use in your institution. There are many other vocabulary resources, you can consult. You will also want to follow standards for information such as country codes and dates (ISO 3166 - link to ISO page). It is important to be consistent in formatting your information.

Metadata about the image

You will need to create fields that describe the image itself. You will need to document what, if any, manipulation was done to an image, and describe the technical details of an image so that it can be interpreted by a system. This information is also necessary to assist in future technological reviews.

Recommended Fields 1

Photograph Number
Image Source Description
Image Source Dimensions
Scanner Make and Model
Scanner Software
Scanner Settings (automatic / manual)
Scan Resolution (dpi)
Image output (width in pixels, height in pixels; bit depth)
Image orientation (portrait/landscape)
Scanning Date
Scanning Staff member
Digital Image Number
Copyright (copyright holder may be different for image than for object)
File size
File format
Related images

Information for an image captured by Digital Camera

Digital Camera (make and model)
Date image captured
Photographer
Image resolution (dpi)
Image Output: width (in pixels) height (in pixels) bit depth
Orientation: portrait landscape
File size
File format

There are many levels of information you can document; you will have to determine your institution's needs and capabilities. When naming image files, you should also follow some conventions. For example, if you use an accession number, you should also use a standard identifier to indicate that the image is a thumbnail, an archival version, or the Internet version. For example, T1998-1-1.JPG for a thumbnail, and 1998-1-1.JPG for a full-sized image of the same object.

1 See for more information about technical data for inclusion: Besser, Howard. Image Standards Needed. sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Imaging/Databases/Standards/napa.html
Sandore, Beth. Emerging communication formats for visual information: Images and their descriptive metadata. University of Illinois at Urbana/Champlain. www.acctbief.org/avenir/images.htm.