Trinity faculty members will soon be able to compile, organize,
and catalogue large collections of digital images and then store them in easily
accessible personal folders for use in classroom presentations. This capability
will be made possible through a software package known as Insight®, a product designed
to help educational and other cultural institutions better manage digital
archives. The College is in the process of purchasing the Insight software system
and is planning to have it available for use during the fall semester.
“The need for this type of service was articulated by the
faculty,” explains John Langeland, director of information technology. “Any
major system purchased for campus use must be compatible with other systems on
campus, and one obvious requirement is that it needs to work as well for
faculty and students using Macintoshes as it does for those who use Windows
PCs. Any imaging system should also integrate with other systems—like Trinity’s
Library system—and rely on hardware and software systems that can be supported
with existing staff skills. These kinds of considerations take time and broad
involvement, and we believe that we’ve found the best long-term solution for
the College.” Langeland also points out that these issues were explored and the
decision to purchase the Insight system was made by a committee comprised of
both Library and Computing
Center staff, with input
from several Trinity faculty members.
Insight was developed by Luna Imaging, Inc., a
California-based digital imaging company founded in 1993 with the support of
the J. Paul Getty Trust and Eastman Kodak. Among the features of the software
package that Trinity will have are the ability to build digital collections of
any size and the means to manage, access, use, and present those collections
over either a network or the Internet. Insight also features a user-friendly
toolset for manipulating images and multimedia exhibits, including zooming on
image details, annotating images, and conducting side-by-side comparisons. In
addition, complete indexing information accompanies each image, allowing for
comprehensive image and subject searches across multiple collections,
regardless of their location.
In February, the College hosted a digital archives workshop
sponsored by the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, an
organization established in 2001 through a grant from the Andrew Mellon
Foundation that serves as a “catalyst for innovation and collaboration for
national liberal arts colleges as they seek to make effective use of
technology.” Specialists in the use of technology in liberal education
presented a series of workshops and dialogues detailing the use of digital
media collections in teaching and learning to a group of Trinity faculty and
staff as well as representatives from other institutions such as Wesleyan,
Mt. Holyoke,
and Amherst.
Once the archiving system has been installed, it will have
to be brought online and into compliance with the College’s computer network—which
will be done under the auspices of Scott Vanek, academic resource specialist
and chair of the digital asset management committee, a group of administrators and
librarians that is working to meet the digital needs of the Trinity community.
This committee will be responsible for setting up the software and coordinating
the administrative policies and procedures for its use. Vanek estimates that
the process to fully incorporate Insight for complex research and everyday
classroom applications will take several months.
“We’ve taken a big step by acquiring this new software,”
Vanek says. “It will give us a lot of options for storing and sharing digital
images, including ways to index and cross-reference different collections, which
is very important to us. We’re very excited about the possibilities.”
