‘Loose Leaves’
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027064 |
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| Pages | 88-90 |
| Author | Veronica Davies |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
'Loose Leaves'
by Veronica Davies
The Independent on Sunday runs an infuriating weekly competition, in which
readers are asked to identify an old master from a tiny detail of the work. The
new Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery will not make the labour of
identification any easier and so will not make Sunday any less troubled. It must
stand, nevertheless, as an important milestone in the development and
popularisation of information technology.
In the Sainsbury Wing's 'Micro-Gallery', visitors can play with touch-
sensitive screens and can interrogate an interactive encyclopaedia of the
National Gallery's collection. The database gives details of artists' lives and
major works, and of techniques, iconography, and patrons. By simply touching
one of the pop-up notes or a thumbnail sketch of a painting, the visitor can
obtain information on a diversity of subjects or, instead, a full-screen picture.
Using the system, it is possible to work out contemporary influences or how an
individual picture fits into a career, school or genre.
The quality of reproduction is particularly impressive. By using 256 separate
colours, which may also be 'diffused' or mixed to create new ones, a fair
approximation to the original is obtained. Apparently, only the Rembrandts
failed the 'colour test' and some additional programming was needed to get the
right chiaroscuro effect. According to Cognitive Applications, the firm which
set up the system, they could have programmed sixteen million different
colours. However, this would have had the effect of using up so much data that
storage and retrieval time would both have suffered.
How different this all sounds to the British Library. Whereas the National
Gallery bought in the services of outside systems architects, the management of
the British Library adopted an intrusive, 'hands-on' approach to automation.
The danger with information technology is that it does not take long for anyone
to convince himself that he has a competent understanding of it. The result is
that committees of self-appointed experts can all too easily get in the way and
impede the progress of the real experts. Such has been the fate of the British
Library experiment in automation. The upshot is predictable: slow delivery of
information to users, with irritating delays and breakdowns; only the
cataloguing of very basic data, and this executed clumsily; and machines which
give plenty of colour graphics but which are suitable primarily for Nintendo
games. In short, the British Library has come up with a system which was out-
of-date by the time of its installation and which does a disservice to the
increasingly sophisticated requirements of readers. To add insult to injury, the
British Library boasts that its present information system is a pilot for use in
the new building at Kings Cross.
* * *
88
To continue reading
Request your trial