Large Image Support in Digital Repositories

Many universities, libraries, government organisations and companies are implementing digital repositories to collect, preserve, administer and distribute their collections via the World Wide Web. In the process of building these digital archives and collections, images such as maps are often are captured in an uncompressed, high-resolution format to preserve as much detail as possible. This process, of high-resolution archiving gives rise to the problem of providing the end-user with access to these large (high-resolution) images, such as maps. This dissertation investigates methods of storing and delivering large images over the Internet while limiting the amount of data being transferred; and also documents efforts to incorporate large image support within the DSpace platform. An end-user usability study of various large image support solutions was conducted to establish how current digital repository large image solutions compared to commercial large image solutions. The study showed that the commercial large image solutions were superior to current digital repository solutions. A prototype large image solution was developed with a specific aim to provide DSpace with mechanisms to import and deliver large images in a bandwidth-conscious manner. It was found that by implementing and extending currently available open source large image processing software, large image support could be provided to the DSpace platform with minimal or no modification to the DSpace source code. An end user evaluation study was conducted to establish the usability and effectiveness of the prototype large image support solution. It was found that the prototype system provided an easy to use solution that provides DSpace with an effective large image archiving and delivery mechanism

Large image support in digital repositories

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-67).Many universities, libraries, government organisations and companies are implementing digital repositories to collect, preserve, administer and distribute their collections via the World Wide Web. In the process of building these digital archives and collections, images such as maps are often are captured in an uncompressed, high-resolution format to preserve as much detail as possible. This process, of high-resolution archiving gives rise to the problem of providing the end-user with access to these large (high-resolution) images, such as maps. This dissertation investigates methods of storing and delivering large images over the Internet while limiting the amount of data being transferred; and also documents efforts to incorporate large image support within the DSpace platform