Images for the tourists: the experiences of the British Tourist Authority and English Tourist Board in setting up a digital image collection
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040639 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Pages | 21-24 |
| Author | Ian Bell |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Images for the
tourists: the
experiences of the
British Tourist
Authority and English
Tourist Board in
setting up a digital
image collection
by Ian
Bell,
British Tourist Authority,
London
The British Tourist Authority and English
Tourist Board are developing a unique library
of digital images relating to tourism, digitised
using Photo-CD, stored in an object-oriented
database, and made accessible to overseas
offices over an Intranet. Issues relating to
copyright,
security,
and the efficient
distribution of high-resolution images have
been considered in depth: other issues remain
unresolved.
Introduction
In November 1996 the British Tourist Authority
and the English Tourist Board, hereafter referred
to as the 'Boards', undertook an initiative to create
a multimedia database containing text, digital
images, sound and movie files. This project, as
with many others, was given a succinct acronym:
TIMMS,
the Tourist Information MultiMedia
System.
However, from the outset, TIMMS was not to get
the start the Boards had hoped for. As with many
publicly funded organisations the Boards could not
allocate the amount of funding needed to establish
a truly multimedia collection. As a result the
Boards decided that TIMMS could not be as
media- rich as first intended. Consequently it was
decided that this first phase should comprise of
a
collection of tourist-related images and text. The
underlying philosophy behind TIMMS was that it
would be a learning experience and that it could
allow the Boards, through trial and error, to learn
how to handle, store and distribute digital images
on a noncommercial basis.
The following article explains how the Boards
went about this, so that the reader can hopefully
learn or draw similar parallels about the paradigms
involved in the building of
a
digital image collec-
tion.
TIMMS:
the project
TIMMS would allow distribution of the Board's
image collection internally. It allows users to
search, browse and retrieve images for a variety of
purposes such as publication or reference. In order
to achieve this the Boards approached the develop-
ment of TIMMS in four succinct stages:
• the collection of tourism related images;
• the digitisation of those images;
• the selection of image handling software;
• the distribution of the collection.
In respect of the last of these, TIMMS would be
made available via an Intranet. This Intranet is an
internal network, exclusive to the Boards and
includes overseas offices, regional tourist boards
and tourist information centres. This Intranet can
be turned into an Extranet allowing those external
publishing agencies undertaking work on behalf of
the Boards to have access to TIMMS.
Such a method of distribution affects all stages of
the project, from the formats in which the images
are delivered, to the software to best handle such a
delivery mechanism and the content of the images
being delivered. This delivery also had to fit in
with the existing technical infrastructure of the
Boards. The following outlines the above-men-
tioned TIMMS project milestones.
Phase
1:
collection of images
The Boards' business involves the promoting of
Britain overseas and the facilitating of tourism
VINE 107 — 21
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