This presentation deals with evolving the metadata vocabularies for zoological image assets.

2. • Located within the Bronx Zoo
• Library was founded in 1909
• Archives was established in 1979
• Most of the archives are housed in
the original library building
• Collections include print and
digital resources on conservation,
veterinary medicine, animal
behavior, and other wildlife topics

3. • Photo Archives & Digital Asset
Management Internship
• Responsible for three projects:
1. Digitization of Department of
Tropical Research historical photos
2. Digital asset management (DAM)
of new image collections
3. Assessment of new metadata
vocabularies & user evaluation
survey

4. • Widen is the DAM
system used by WCS
Library & Archives
• Institutional users can use
Widen to access digital
images by category or
keyword search
• Metadata is added to
digital image assets using
Adobe Bridge

6. • Created and provided a survey to
50 institutional users
• Suggested 20 possible terms
asking whether or not they are
useful for searchability
• Received and analyzed 23
responses
• Terms suggested by the site
supervisor and me performed well
• Users provided valuable
comments

8. • Find the frequency of vocabulary
terms in online resources
• Evaluate media that is specific to
only animals
• Used 20 terms coming from a
combination of the user survey,
comments from survey responses,
and my own choices not in survey
• Collect data from 12 online
resources containing a large number
of animal photographs and then
normalize and find trends

9. • Terms from user comments
performed very well
• Zoo-affiliated resources had very
different results from resources not
affiliated with zoos
• Conservation, baby, male and
female, group, keeper, and family
were the highest-scoring terms
• Many terms scored well in some
resources but poorly in others

11. • The context of the resources used makes
a large difference in the results
• Metadata vocabularies made for the
correct subject but in the wrong context
might not be useful to users
• This study does not take into account
whether terms are subjective or otherwise
difficult to use in metadata vocabularies
• Since user-provided terms did quite well,
it was immensely helpful to perform the
user survey before gathering this data

12. • The process of creating a useful
metadata vocabulary requires a
multi-faceted approach
• The users of a collection are the
best source for ideas and insight
into metadata term selection
To review the complete methodology and
results of this study, visit:
http://zoocabulary.wordpress.com

13. Images:
•Title Slide (Raccoon)
http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/northern-racoon-photographer-texas-hill-country-usa-10555-pictures.htm
•Practicum Information Slide (Bronx Zoo)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Stavenn_Bronx_Zoo_00.jpg
Sources:
•Attig, J., Copeland, A., & Pelikan, M. (2004). Context and meaning: The challenges of metadata for a digital image library within the
university. College & Research Libraries, 65 (3), 251-261. Retrieved from http://crl.acrl.org/content/65/3/251.full.pdf
•Breitbach, B.M., Tracey, R., & Neely, T.Y. (2002). Managing a digital collection: The Garst photographic collection. Reference Services
Review, 30 (2), 124-142.
•Kandel, S., Abelson, E., Garcia-Molina, H., Paepcke, A., & Theobald, M. (2008). PhotoSpread: A spreadsheet for managing photos.
In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. Retrieved from
http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/857/1/2007-38.pdf
•Leyssen, M. H., Traub, M. C., van Ossenbruggen, J., & Hardman, L. (2012). Is it a bird or is it a crow? The influence of presented
tags on image tagging by non-expert users. CWI Tech 2012. Report INS-1202, CWI. Retrieved from
http://oai.cwi.nl/oai/asset/20690/20690D.pdf
•Schreiber, A. Th., Dubbeldam, B., Wielmaker, J., & Wielinga, B. (2001). Ontology-based photo annotation. IEEE Intelligent Systems,
16 (3), 66-74. Retrieved from http://www.cs.vu.nl/~guus/papers/Schreiber01a.pdf