Blog
Many of you are currently on the road, on vacation, on excursion, on study trip, or you are already planning the next tour. Today, we would just like to briefly draw your attention to the fact that you can also work on the road via prometheus app and smartphone with your personal access in the image archive. This is probably not really important now if you want to switch off and relax on vacation. But, if you want to take photos on your research topic or for the next term paper on the go and upload them directly to your own database at prometheus and store them in an image collection, then “prometheus to go” is exactly the right application. In addition, you can directly juxtapose your image with images from the image archive, for example in your favorites, or use the metadata as a guide if you find comparable ones in all image databases during your search.
If you don’t use the app yet, you can find it here at Google Play and in the App Store.
We have created a new Playlist on our YouTube-Channel and listed music videos, namely music videos in which works of art can be seen, as in ‘Apeshit’ by the Carters or in ‘Viva la Vida’ by Coldplay, music videos in which works of art from European art history are re-enacted, as in ’70 Million" by Hold your Horses, and many more. Additional information can be found in the two blog posts from the online magazine “Beige” mentioned there or in the references given.
Do you know any other music videos that fall into this category? Do you know of any other literature on the subject? We like to update.
Ende Mai haben wir in einem Blogbeitrag zusammengefasst, was sich hinter Objektorientierung im Bildarchiv verbirgt. Jetzt steht Ihnen auch ein passender Filter für Ihre Suchergebnisse in der erweiterten Suche zur Verfügung. Mit „Nach Objekten filtern“ können Sie sich nur Objekte in Ihrer Suchergebnisliste anzeigen lassen. Objekte, die aus einer oder aus mehreren der 18 objektorientierten Bilddatenbanken stammen, die in prometheus integriert sind: von „Amsterdam Museum“ bis „Virtuelle Diathek – Ägyptologie“.
Of course, only if you have a personal account with prometheus and if there is a reason to do so, such as a new email address or a change to another licensed institute. You can access your profile by clicking on your name in the top right-hand corner when you are logged in. Your profile opens and you see your name, email address, … Another click on the pencil and you can change the details. On this page you can also change your institution or your licence yourself, so that you can continue to access your content such as image collections, your own database and the favourites if you change university or institute or if you change to an individual licence, under the item “Licence”: “Purchase a new licence or change your institution …”?
In the list of licensed institutions you can see whether your (new) institution (now) belongs to it. If so, select it, save and you belong to the new institution. Your administrator can find you in the list of institutions from now on and, for example, extend your access there if necessary.
If your personal access has already expired, it may still be possible to reactivate it with all personal settings. Please ask before you have to create a new account and repeat your work in the image archive. We are happy to help.
With 870 images, another HeidICON image pool is integrated into prometheus: „HeidICON – Kurpfälzisches Museum“. In this image database you will find printed and drawn views of the city of Heidelberg, Heidelberg Castle and other places in the Electoral Palatinate from the 16th to the 21st century Century from the collection of the Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg.
It includes watercolors and drawings by the Heidelberg Romantics Carl Philipp Fohr, Ernst Fries and Carl Rottmann, who traveled throughout Europe and created landscapes of the Bavarian Alps, Italy and Greece, as well as genre paintings and portraits.
Numerous sheets from the graphic collection of the Heidelberg University Library, which show the Heidelberg Castle, the city of Heidelberg as well as towns, villages and landscapes of the Palatinate region, supplement the works in the museum.
Prometheus currently contains 2,819,764 images from 113 image databases for research and teaching. These images are mostly images with exactly one data set, because most of the integrated databases have a so-called “flat” structure. If there are multiple views, such as three-dimensional objects or series, the metadata is often duplicated. In prometheus, each image is then tagged separately with the metadata.
However, there are some databases that store their data as objects and link the associated images to the respective data records. That is why we save the object ID in these image databases and also link the images to objects within prometheus.
For example, if you search for “Cologne Cathedral”, you will see further views under individual images in the list of results, such as Gerhard Richter’s “Südquerhausfenster” in “ConedaKOR Frankfurt, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Institute of Art History”. If you click on “Show all” you will see 23 views of the object.
If you search for “Ludwigsburg Palace”, there are also other views such as “Ludwigsburg Palace [detail view/inside, chapel]” in “DadaWeb, University of Cologne, Institute of Art History”. “View All” takes you to 12 views of the object.
Incidentally, in your own database in prometheus you also have the option of linking your uploaded image to other images as a "superordinate object“.
Due to the great interest and the demand for the possibility to filter search results by dating, we decided to integrate a first preliminary version of our dating filter in the advanced search. So far, about 80% of all records of the 113 image databases in prometheus are tagged with dates. Of these, about 75% are available for filtering by dating. In the coming weeks and months, we will continuously improve the data and filter functionality. In addition, we are working on the integration of a slider as well as on the optimization and renewal of the user*interface, which we are all very excited about.
Try out the dating filter.
For example, if you search for “Venice” in the title in the advanced search, you will get 3,998 records in the results list and the dating filter. If you now limit the results there to 1900 to 1950, there are 187 records with time periods such as “1840-1906”, “1846-1937”, or “1855-1900”, with estimated dates such as “around 1901” or “around 1895”, and with unique dates from the time period you are looking for.
We welcome your feedback on usability, as well as suggestions for improvement and any errors that may occur. We will also soon integrate a way to report incorrect dating information in an uncomplicated way, so that the data quality can be improved even faster with your help.
In the project DigiROM thousands of historical picture postcards and graphics are currently being digitalized, which predominantly refer to clichéd representations of an antiziganistically determined stereotype. This stock is also to be integrated into prometheus as an image database. Before that, however, some things have to be discussed, conceptualized and then implemented.
A decisive factor for the reorganization and discussion of the existing digitization practices is the political work of the Rom e.V. and the integration of the existing expertise of Rom*nja and Sinti*ze there. In order not to manifest stereotypes with the collection of images, which are testimonies of an antiziganism, as it has been circulating in the European area since the 15th century and as it continues in unchanging clichés and stereotypes in very similar, recurring image elements up to the present, a dialogue with Rom*nja and Sinti*ze is needed. The aim of this dialogue is to find common ways to a justifiable digitalization and a practice of representation without reflecting the existing clichés without comment. Conceivable are barriers and references directly on the images.
In the article at DW Kultur by Maria John Sánchez it says at the end: “Vera Tönsfeldt (head of the DigiROM project) has not yet found a definitive answer to this question. But the way to get there is … clear”. A dialog must take place.
Sometimes it says: “h 250mm × w 281mm”, sometimes it doesn’t: “20.6 × 26.1 cm”. The information in the metadata for the image, in the field “Dimensions” varies, but always describes first height x width, for three-dimensional objects the depth is added: height x width x depth. In order to get an idea of how large or how small the displayed works and objects on our site are, we are working on a display of the dimensions, similar to the digital collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. There, the measurements are additionally visualized, e.g. in
„Sandro Botticelli. Weibliches Idealbildnis (Bildnis der Simonetta Vespucci als Nymphe), ca. 1480 – 1485, 81,3 × 54 x min. 0,3 cm“ or „Stefan Lochner. Die Apostelmartyrien, nach 1435, 121 × 163,1 × 8,3 cm (Gesamtmaß)“.
On YouTube we now also have our own channel! There, we will gradually make videos of others available in playlists, in a next step add some conference videos from other portals and video works of students as well as create and upload new videos.
Currently, “how-to” videos like „Bildsammlungen erstellen mit dem Prometheus-Bildarchiv“ (create image collections with the prometheus Image Archive) by Jacqueline Klusik-Eckert are available there, as well as compilations of “actions on the web” like “Invasioni Digitali” in the context of the International Museum Day 2014. In addition, you will find informational videos and screencasts on completed projects like “Meta-Image” and “The Digital Historical Archive Cologne” as well as videos and workshop recordings on the current project “NFDI4Culture”. For the time being, the videos are only available in German, but if they gain enough interest, we would like to offer English subtitles as well.
You know a video about the image archive that we haven’t included here yet? You have always been looking for a video about the work in the Bildarchiv, but haven’t found one? We welcome your ideas, suggestions and tips. Write to us and we’ll see how quickly we can realize something.
