Tod A. Olson
<tod@uchicago.edu>
The University of Chicago Library
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
July 29, 2003 (music searching sites added August 5, 2003)
One of the most common types of digital library projects involves putting books or other text online. For example, the New Zealand Digital Library makes available many humanitarian and UNESCO collections of documents:
The NZDL also hosts a number of unusual or experimental collections, such as "First Aid in Pictures."
One way to present music in digital libraries is by presenting images of the written music. Two notable examples:
Chopin Early Editions: http://chopin.lib.uchicago.edu
Levy Sheet Music Collection: http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/
Recent work has also focused on searching by musical content. Such systems might allow a user to type in some coded form of musical query, perhaps indicating that the notes go "up down same up down." Some systems allow the user to perform a small a sample, perhaps via an attached keyboard, or via "query by humming," where the user actually hums or sings into a microphone.
MELDEX: http://www.nzdl.org/musiclib
(Needs Java and a microphone.)
Melodyhound: http://name-this-tune.com/
Themefinder: http://www.themefinder.org/
The most common way to deal with images in a digital library to to provide some textual description and allow people to search on that. Gordon Paynter's photograph album provides an excellent example, http://tuatara.ucr.edu/gsdl-bin/library?a=p&p=about&c=pictures.
One notable project that uses 3-D is Digital Morphology at the University of Texas at Austin, http://www.digimorph.org/
Some ambitious work allows searching by image content, though these systems are still new and experimental. Two examples:
The Hermitage Museum in Russia uses IBM's QBIC software to offer two types of searching: by color composition, and by layout. Java required.
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/qbicSearch.mac/qbic?selLang=English
Pic2Seek offers searching for similar images, though it is not always clear how "similar" is determined. Java required.
Museum of Science and Industry, http://www.msichicago.org/
Go the the Exhibits. The Coal Mine and U-505 online exhibits are good examples of trying to translate a sense of the physical experience to the online exhibit.
Art Institute of Chicago, http://www.artic.edu/aic/
Some features require QuickTime.
Exploratorium ExploraNet http://www.exploratorium.edu/
Krannert Art Museum, http://www.art.uiuc.edu/galleries/kam/index.html
For more information, examples, and suggestions for further reading, see the following paper from December, 2002: