Image analysis and indexing in North America: a survey

Abstract

Those in charge of image collections in North America have found it difficult to agree upon standards for classifying and cataloguing their material, and many individual and incompatible systems have been developed. However there has been some recent progress in co-ordination, and this paper surveys some inter-institutional projects attempting to create standards, based on an awareness of user needs, primarily the Image Access Society, the Library of Congress list of subject headings for the Prints and Photographs Division, the Picture Division Thesaurus of the Public Archives of Canada and the Art and Architecture Thesaurus. This paper is a continuation of a survey, “Subject indexing of visual resources: a survey”, published in Visual Resources: an International Journal of Documentation, Vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 1980, pp.67-73.