End-user searching challenges indexing practices in the digital newspaper photo archive

Previous research in conceptual indexing methods of images has furnished us with refined theoretical frameworks characterising various aspects of images that could and should be indexed using textual descriptors. The development of digital image processing technologies has bred a brigade of content-based indexing and retrieval methods available for applications. What the users need and in what kinds of environments different indexing and retrieval methods are relevant, has remained an area of less intensive research work. This article presents the results of a field study concentrating on journalists as users of a digital newspaper photo archive. The expressed photo needs, applied selection criteria and observed searching behaviours in journalists' daily work were contrasted with the indexing practices applied by the archivists. The results showed that the journalists achieved satisfactory results when trivial query terms were available, e.g. when photos of named persons were needed. Browsing was the main searching strategy applied by the journalists, but the system did not support browsing well. The access problems faced by the users in particular photo needs are discussed in detail. The paper concludes by discussing the potential approaches in developing both the concept-based and content-based indexing methods as well as the user interfaces in photo retrieval systems. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.