Karen Kupiec, Director, Library Access Integration Services, introduced Metagallery. This new tool was developed jointly by the Visual Resources Collection and CMI2. The Visual Resources Collection has now digitized over 260,000 images from the slide and photograph collection and they had been exploring ways to make this digital content more easily accessible for Yale courses. CMI2 was simultaneously working with professors who were presenting images in the classroom. The two departments pooled resources to develop Metagallery to combine content and tools to use that content in support of teaching and research. Metagallery also allows for the integration of institutional, licensed (ARTstor), and personal images and other multimedia objects for teaching and learning. The tool has been available since November 2008 and is still in beta. Both the VRC and CMI2 are looking for feedback.
Approximately 5 professors are using Metagallery to support their courses. In one example, Professor Koichi Shinohara is teaching a course on Sacred places in Asia and utilizing Metagallery to organize the 500 images that compliment the readings for the course. Metagallery has been integrated into the Classesv2 for this course and students are sharing Metagallery image groups via links on a course blog.
Carolyn Caizzi, Technology Specialist in the Visual Resources Collection, offered a tour of the Metagallery walking through the ways to browse and search the images. Carolyn also pointed out that the images in the Visual Resources Collection are not just art and art history, but include visual and material culture across the disciplines. She also noted that of the images in Metagallery are downloadable and available for use in Powerpoint.
Gabe Rossi, Instructional Technologist at CMI2, walked us through the rationale for the Metagallery development. He highlighted that one of the drivers for development was the need to make collections more visible and fully integrated into course activities. He also mentioned that Metagallery allows users to augment the metadata and therefore contextualize it for use in classes. Additionally, other formats and media can be added to groups such as video, audio, etc.
This tool can also be used to organize and group your own personal media collections. The file size limit is 50 megabytes per object but currently there is no limit to storage space for individuals. This will evolve as the tool develops.
Currently the developers of Metagallery are working with focus groups and doing usability testing. The ultimate goal is to add other Yale Collections to Metagallery for enhanced searchability. There is a “Send us your feedback” button on the bottom of each page.
If interested in using Metagallery for courses, contact Carolyn Caizzi, carolyn.caizzi@yale.edu. For new features or development contact Gabe Rossi, gabriel.rossi@yale.edu.
For information about using Metagallery, please see the attachment: