The Stock Artists Alliance has unveiled PhotoMetadata.org, the Web site of the SAA Metadata Project financed by a grant from the U.S. Library of Congress. The Web site is supported by the getMETAsmart tour of events, which kick off this week in Dallas and will travel through the country.
The mission of the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is to develop a national strategy to collect, archive and preserve digital content, especially materials that are created only in digital formats. Funds awarded to the SAA are being used more narrowly to promote standard metadata use across the image-licensing industry.
Specifically, the SAA wants to ensure that creators embed metadata in their images, while stock distributors, users, archivists and software developers correctly interpret and preserve this information as image files are processed, copied, licensed, published online, reproduced and archived. Last year’s SAA MetaSurvey showed that too few images on the Web have identifying metadata.
The new Web site and tour make public a set of free tools and resources, developed by the SAA and project partners that include Adobe, Microsoft, Camera Bits, Photoshelter, PicScout and the IPTC. The Web site is designed to explain metadata to beginners while helping more advanced practitioners improve their current practices, by providing extensive guides and links to other resources. Shortly, the Web site will also offer step-by-step screencasts and PDF tutorials for metadata management from within popular software packages. The SAA stresses that such knowledge is not only necessary to preserve our digital legacy, but also to protect copyrights, support licensing efforts and improve workflows.
The getMETAsmart tour will take form of free evening events. The SAA encourages advanced registrations due to limited space. In May and June, the tour will visit Dallas, San Antonio, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Washington; additional events are planned for Atlanta, Chicago and Tucson.