PERSPECTIVES ON.. .

Imaging: Advanced Applications

EDITOR

Lois F. Lunin Consultant, Washington, DC; and the Department of Radiology, Cornell University Medical College, New York, New York 10021

GUEST EDITOR

Clifford A. Lynch Director of Library Automation, University of California, Office of the President, Oakland, California 94672

Introduction and Overview

This Perspectives offers a series of articles that ad- dress relationships between electronic imaging technol- ogy and information science. The articles discuss the areas of technology, applications, conceptual founda- tions, and future visions. Our choice of authors for this series reflects our decision to deemphasize technology for technology’s sake. Clifford Lynch provides the only article focused primarily on technology. While it does provide a brief survey of the technological underpin- nings of electronic imaging as background to other arti- cles, much of Lynch’s article explores the problems involved in integrating electronic imaging with the de- veloping national and international computer networks that are increasingly defining the setting for all types of research and scholarly communication.

Michael Buckland’s article holds a special place in this Perspectives. Buckland raises fundamental ques- tions about the scope of information science and infor- mation retrieval, and illustrates how this scope has evolved over the last 60 years. He reaquaints us with the work of the European documentalists of the pre- World War II period, and explains how the new imag- ing technologies allow us to transcend the constraints created by inadequate information handling technolo- gies in the post-World War II period as automation revo- lutionized information science. At that time, there was a refocusing on text, which occurred largely without critical discussion because automation WAS achievable. We believe that the entire information science commu- nity needs to consider carefully the lessons summarized in Buckland’s article.

In selecting applications to showcase in this section, we have tried to avoid areas that are already relatively well known within the ASIS community and well- covered in the literature, such as the use of electronic imaging technology for conservation, preservation, and the capture, storage, and transmission of printed ma- terial such as journal articles or technical reports as bitmapped images. Large-scale prototypes are already operational in these areas, including the work of the National Agriculture Library’s text digitizing project in conjunction with North Carolina State University, the Research Library Information Network’s document de- livery workstation, the American Chemical Society/ OCLCICornell CORE project, and the CUPID project being led by Cornell University. Many corporations and government agencies are already harnessing imaging technology in production applications for forms and

0 1991 by John Wiley 8 Sons, Inc

document management, including storage of income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service, insurance documents, credit card receipts (American Express), parts catalogs, and maintenance manuals for large, costly, complex systems such as aircraft.

Instead, we have invited articles covering imaging in the visual arts (Howard Besser), medicine (David Beard), and textile history (Clarita Anderson). These articles show the range of areas in which electronic imaging is generating widespread changes in both re- search and access to information resources. In addition, they raise the issues of image quality and the ability of the image to substitute for the artifact being imaged. Besser’s article, in particular, conveys a sense of the potential that imaging technology offers for finally opening the huge riches of collections held by libraries, museums, and other organizations, which, until now, have been relatively inaccessible to most users. Ander- son’s article highlights an unusual application of imag- ing-textile history-that is closely related to museum applications, but is outside of the traditional museum context. Anderson also gives a good sense of the practi- cal problems involved in developing image databases from scratch.

Beard’s article focuses more on a specific imaging ap- plication in medicine, but he uses it as a case study to raise important questions about the design of user inter- faces to electronic imaging applications. While much work has been done on the effectiveness of user inter- faces and retrieval systems over the past few years, the great majority of this work has focused either on textual information or on the design of graphical interfaces- that is, interfaces using windows, buttons, icons, and other graphical techniques, but which may, in fact, still be interfaces to primary textual databases-or both. User interfaces for image data represent a rich field of research that will be explored in the coming years as image retrieval systems become more commonplace.

Space limitations prevented us from addressing many other interesting and important applications areas for electronic imaging: geographical information systems, remote sensing, astronomy, physics, and history. We did not have space to explore many of the fascinating projects incorporating more general multimedia, such as the Library of Congress’s American Memory project.

Rounding out this Perspectives are two articles that look into the future. Both William Nugent and John Romkey address issues related to the currently popular work in virtual reality and cyberspace. This group of visions and technologies has recently received a consid- erable amount of attention both in technical circles and

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in the popular press. By the time this issue of .&ISIS reaches print, several major popular books on the topic should have been published. Virtual reality is interest- ing from several perspectives. It represents a conver- gence of many of the technologies of user interface and imaging technologies to achieve a new approach to ex- ploring data that promises far greater effectiveness and accessibility than current human-computer interfaces. It remains to be seen, or course, whether this promise can be achieved. Cyberspace, as a vision, also has as- pects of a social movement. Nugent and Romkey exam- ine both of these aspects, and we hope that their articles will give information scientists a better under- standing of the real implications and promises of the new virtual reality technologies.

As we move into the 199Os, a technology base that is increasingly capable of capturing; storing, transmitting, and displaying images, multmedia material, and per- haps even virtual reality will be developing. Delivering on the promise of this technology base by selecting, or- ganizing, and providing access to nontextual materials will be a major challenge to information science and will call for some fundamental reassessment of existing practice, which is often highly oriented towards textual information. It is our hope that this Perspectives will provide the reader with an introduction to the key is- sues, a survey of a number of important early applica- tions, and some insight into possible futures.

CLIFFORD A. LYNCH LOIS F. LUNIN

About the Authors

Clarita Anderson received her Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Maryland in Textiles with a concen- tration in Historic Textiles. She became interested in computer images when they became necessary for her study of the transmission and universality of design mo- tifs found in coverlets. Her ultimate goal is to search for design similarities by images.

David Beard received his Ph.D. in computer sci- ence from the University of Michigan in 1985 and then joined the faculty at the University of North Caro- lina at Chapel Hill where he holds faculty positions in Radiology and Computer Science. He specializes in computer-human interaction in image and other visual information systems. Dr. Beard currently heads the UNC radiology workstation interaction project.

Howard Besser is Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh where he teaches a course in image databases. For 15 years he worked with visual collections at the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley as Information Manager for the University Art Museum, and later as Image Database Specialist for the central campus Computer Center’s Advanced Technology Planning group.

Michael K. Buckland is Professor of Library and In- formation Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Current interests include the improvement of online library catalogs, planning future library services, and the development of information retrieval before 1945. He has degrees in History and in Librarianship and experience in academic libraries and academic ad- ministration. His writings include Book Availability and the Library User (1975), Library Services in Theory and Context (2nd ed.) (1988), and Information and Znforma- tion Systems (forthcoming).

Clifford A. Lynch is the Director of the Division of Library Automation at the University of California Of- fice of the President, where he is responsible for the MELVYL’ information system, one of the largest pub- lic access information retrieval systems in existence, as well as the computer internetwork linking the nine UC campuses. He has been at the University of California in various positions since 1979. Dr. Lynch has also been involved in a wide variety of research and development efforts in the application of advanced technologies to information management and delivery, including work with computer networking, information servers, data- base management systems, and imaging technologies. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Lynch partici- pates in several standards activities, is Principal Investi- gator of various research grants, and is the author of several books and more than 50 published papers.

William R. Nugent is Assistant Director for Re- search at the Information Technology Services Office of the Library of Congress (LC) where he is conducting research on high-resolution electronic imaging and di- recting the Library’s Optical Storage Testing and Preservation Laboratory. He is one of the initiators of LC’s Optical Disk Pilot Program wherein high resolu- tion digitized page images are being stored on optical disks for remote retrieval in reading rooms of the Li- brary’s three buildings. He is the developer of the LC Digital Videodisc, which permits in-house production of color still image videodiscs. Prior to specializing in information systems Mr. Nugent designed computers and data communications networks. He is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn with graduate work in computers and auto- mata theory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of various standards committees and the author of more than 60 papers on information sys- tems with most recent emphasis on electronic imaging and optical storage systems and applications.

John Romkey graduated from the Massachusetts In- stitute of Technology with a BS in Computer Science in 1985. He founded FTP Software in 1986, and currently spends much of his time working with computer net- works at Epilogue Technology in California, connecting obscure things like toasters and brains to the Internet.

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