Access to Pictorial Material: A Review of Current Research and Future Prospects

Rapid expansion in the digitization of image and image collections has vastly increased the numbers of images available to scholars and researchers through electronic means. This research review will familiarize the reader with current research applicable to the development of image retrieval systems and provides additional material for exploring the topic further, both in print and online. The discussion will cover several broad areas, among them classification and indexing systems used for describing image collections and research initiatives into image access focusing on image attributes, users, queries, tasks, and cognitive aspects of searching. Prospects for the future of image access, including an outline of future research initiatives, are discussed. Further research in each of these areas will provide basic data which will inform and enrich image access system design and will hopefully provide a richer, more flexible, and satisfactory environment for searching for and discovering images. Harnessing the true power of the digital image environment will only be possible when image retrieval systems are coherently designed from principles derived from the fullest range of applicable disciplines, rather than from isolated or fragmented perspectives.