Towards user‐centered indexing in digital image collections

Abstract

Purpose-User-created metadata, often referred to as folksonomy or social classification, has received a considerable amount of attention in the digital library world. Social tagging is perceived as a tool for enhancing description of digital objects and providing a venue for user input and greater user engagement. This article seeks to examine the pros and cons of user-generated metadata in the context of digital image collections and compares it to professionally created metadata schema and controlled vocabulary tools. Design/methodology/approach-The article provides an overview of challenges to concept-based image indexing. It analyzes the characteristics of social classification and compares images described by users to a set of images indexed in a digital collection. Findings-The article finds that user-generated metadata vary in the level of description, accuracy, and consistency and do not provide a solution to the challenges of image indexing. On the other hand, they reflects user's language and can lead toward user-centered indexing and greater user engagement. Practical implications-Social tagging can be implemented as a supplement to professionally created metadata records to provide an opportunity for users to comment on images. Originality/value-The article introduces the idea of user-centered image indexing in digital collections.

A comparative study of Flickr tags and index terms in a general image collection

“…Among the few researchers who address the topic of social tagging of images, some focused only on general issues, considering only a few images and tags for analysis (e.g., Matusiak, 2006). Only a handful of researchers (Jörgensen, 1998(Jörgensen, , 1999Trant, 2006) have embarked on research similar to the current study, investigating the difference between social tags or user-generated descriptions of images and professionally assigned indexing terms.…”

“…Irrespective of whether some in the image research community see social tagging on Flickr as a challenge (Matusiak, 2006), even to the extent proportional to the number of Flickr users, or an opportunity (Matusiak, 2006;Trant, 2006) to improve image indexing, the nature of social tagging is a research area that needs immediate attention due to its dynamic nature, its popularity, and the tremendous opportunity it affords those striving to design user-centered image indexing and retrieval systems. To inform system design for the indexing and retrieval of images from collections across the board (the Web, social networking services, digital libraries, etc.…”

“…For instance, images in the cultural heritage domain could be tagged and annotated by users knowledgeable about local history and language (Matusiak, 2006). A few museums have seized the opportunity presented by social tagging (Bearman & Trant, 2005;Trant, 2006) to improve indexing and access to their image and art collections.…”

“…However, due to the relative novelty of social tagging, research projects similar to the current study are few and far between (Spiteri, 2007), although this is beginning to change. While a few researchers have tackled the topic of social tagging of images in depth (e.g., Stvilia & Jörgensen, 2009), some only focused on general issues and considered only a few images and tags for analysis (e.g., Matusiak, 2006). So far, only a handful of researchers (Jörgensen, 1998(Jörgensen, , 1999Trant, 2006) have embarked on research similar to the current study, in which the focus of the investigation is the difference between user-generated tags or descriptions of images and the index terms assigned to images in general image collections using traditional indexing tools.…”

“…On the other hand, social tagging provides indexingsystem designers with the opportunity of a rich end-user vocabulary, and the bulk of the workload is shared among users in a distributed and networked environment. Its multicultural and multilingual set of users and tags is an ideal test bed for cross-language image retrieval, and information professionals can take advantage of the inherent motivation of tagging for oneself to involve users in the indexing process (Matusiak, 2006).…”