Leveraging Images for Fashion Research
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This document discusses the Vogue Archive digital project undertaken by Condé Nast from 2009-2011 to digitize and provide access to the complete run of Vogue magazine. The project involved scanning over 2,700 issues containing over 400,000 pages and 120,000 articles and images. Sophisticated metadata and taxonomies were developed to organize and search the content. Both internal Condé Nast employees and external researchers and brands can access the high-resolution digital archive. The document explores how this corporate digital archive project relates to and advances the field of digital humanities and alternative library and information science.
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Leveraging Images for Fashion Research
- 1. Leveraging Images and Metadata for Fashion and Cultural Research
- 3. What is DH?
- 4. What is #alt-LIS? •DH projects •Evolving roles and responsibilities •New venues and careers •Training and support
- 6. What is Vogue? • Monthly document of record, “The Bible” • Fashion history • High society • Fashion in context • Joan Didion, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Susan Sontag, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., William Faulkner, Graham Greene…
- 7. Statistics •2,797 issues •430,600 pages •121,206 articles •448,750 images •320,034 advertisements •2009 – 2011 •Enhanced metadata back to 1940
- 8. Corporate Structure—EAR Editorial Assets + Rights Digital Archive Physical Archive Library Legal Tech
- 9. Vogue Archive Overview • Robust digital archive • 1892-present: every article, image, and advertisement • Discover content by: • Browsing by issue date • Searching and faceting on specific terms • Stunning hi-res visuals • Powerful metadata • Broad communities of users
- 10. Users Internal External Vogue Archive Digital Archive Physical Archive Condé Nast Employees Researchers + Readers
- 11. External Users Individuals Institutions Libraries and Universities Advertising + Branding Fashion Houses Individual Subscribers Vogue Readers
- 13. Institutional Partners + Stakeholders EAR Vogue WGSN Proquest Apex
- 15. Project Objectives •Elegant and powerful •Next-generation catalogs + OPACS •E-commerce sites •Preserve, showcase, monetize •Intuitive •Brand-compatible
- 16. Workflow Overview CN Digital Archive CN Physical Archive External vendor: - Image scans - OCR - XML conversion Digital Archive, CN technologists Vogue Archive
- 17. Conversion and QA Workflow Issues out to vendor Hi-Res Tiff JPG XML OCR 25 TB Tiffs - 5 TB JPGs Delivery to Condé Nast for storage Ingest XML, staging Create thumbnails, deep zoom, printable images Image storage on Web Servers Master XML on SQL databases Keyworder + text-mining Ingest XML, production Fast Feed Update, data merge Vogue Archive Data Store (SQL) FAST server Viewer
- 18. Taxonomies and Ontologies ALL ABOUT METADATA… • OCR • Digital Archive + Fashion Historians …AND STANDARDIZATION • Hierarchies + flat lists • Industry vocabulary, Vogue usage • Proper terms
- 19. Hierarchies Clothing Coat Fit-and- flare Fit-and-flare = Fit and flare = Hourglass Clothing Coat Fitted Clothing Coat Frock Frock = Cutaway Prince Albert, Victorian Clothing Coat Gabardine Trench, Raincoat, Mac, Mackintosh, Military Clothing Coat Greatcoat Greatcoat = Watchcoat Military KEYWORD CATEGORY DESCRIPTOR SYNONYMS SUGGESTED SEARCHES
- 20. Front End
- 21. Back End
- 22. Other CN Digital Archive Projects CONDÉ NAST PHOTO PORTAL
- 23. Agile Project Management PROD DEV Systems Architects T T T T T Digital Archive Group T T T T T JIRA + CONFLUENCE
- 24. The Vogue Archive, Digital Humanities, and #alt-LIS On terms and crossing-borders
- 25. What is DH?
- 26. What is DH?
- 28. Library as Locus for DH Activity
- 29. DH in the Private Sector (James Smithies) “…narrowing the gap between the commercial and scholarly worlds.” “…out of the ivory tower and back to an engagement with the ‘real world.”
- 30. DH in the Private Sector Branding Marketing “Competing for Attention” (Tom Scheinfeldt)
- 31. Funding—Corporate Lessons? “The Best Revenue Models and Funding Sources for Your Digital Resources” (Ithaka S+R and JISC) Advertising Selling/Licensing Content Selling/Licensing Platforms + Expertise
- 32. Is the Vogue Archive a DH project? • It’s complicated… • YES: • Digital processing of archival collections • Networked information • Enhanced study and research • Inherently interdisciplinary • Fashion, History, Journalism, Computer Sciences • Has an essential public-facing application • NO: • Commissioned and executed in a corporate environment • Subscription-based • Not overtly concerned with humanistic inquiry
- 33. Enhanced Data Enhanced Texts Abstract: Remove "
- 34. What is #alt-LIS? •DH projects •Evolving roles and responsibilities •New venues and careers •Training and support
- 35. Sources • Slide 2 • http://southeast2012.thatcamp.org/03/08/alt-lis • Slide 3 • http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com • http://sites.library.northwestern.edu/dh/ • http://nowviskie.org/2012/reality-bytes/ • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fe2-7mK8j8 • Slide 4 • http://southeast2012.thatcamp.org/03/08/alt-lis • Slide 10 • http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/jackie-kennedy- unscripted/#1 • Slide 16 • Schematic courtesy of Demetri Vasiadis • Slide 23 • http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com • http://sites.library.northwestern.edu/dh/ • http://nowviskie.org/2012/reality-bytes/ • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fe2-7mK8j8 • Slide 24 • http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com • Slide 25 • Opensyllabusproject.org • Metalab.harvard.edu • Wwp.brown.edu • Omeka.org • Neatline.org • Scalar.usc.edu • Buildinginspector.nypl.org • Maps.nypl.org/warper • Slide 26 • http://nypl.org/collections/labs • http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/dhandth elib/ • http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/02/23/does- the-library-have-a-role-to-play-in-the-digital- humanities/ • Slide 27 • http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/00010 7/000107.html • http://nowviskie.org/2012/too-small-to-fail/ • http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/03/26/soft- money-is-not-a-four-letter-word/ • Slide 29--Branding • http://www.foundhistory.org/2009/02/26/brand- name-scholar/ • Slide 30—Funding • http://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/the-best-revenue- models-and-funding-sources-for-your-digital-resources • http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/03/26/soft- money-is-not-a-four-letter-word/ • Slide 34 • http://southeast2012.thatcamp.org/03/08/alt-lis • http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2012/dhandth elib/
Editor's Notes
- Can talk about other archive projects…WWD, AD, Montrose,
- While DH and alt-LIS are mostly thought of as existing within academia, here I want to make a case for a parallel world of similar activity happening in the private sectorUsing technical solutions to render flat collections searchable, machine readable, and eminently networkedInherently public-facing (although, with an obvious corporate caveat which we’ll get to)Capitalizing on relatively new roles and relationships among librarians, archivists, technologists, and so onHope to show that my digital archive group is somewhat of a corporate analog to groups like yours
- Made innovations in advertising (full-page colors)
- Editorial Assets and RightsDigital ArchivePhysical ArchiveLibraryTechnologyPermissions + ContractsDiverse group of skills and backgroundsGovern all content preservation and reuse workflowsBridge Editorial and Business departments across companyPerfectly comprised to fulfill mandate of developing digital archive projects and managing company’s digital assets
- Pure corporate market: trend forecasting, design inspiration, ad research – fashion houses, dept stores, stylistsCultural nonproft: Met Costume Institute (like Punk exhibit…this is all about trends field), MoMA…research for rexhibitions, cultural research, catalog writingAcademic/Public libraries: FIT, Parsons, NYPL…scholarly research
- Digital and physical archive staff members use it for research and exhibit prepOther CN employees—like Vogue magazine and business departments--use it for editorial and business research needsExternal researchers: individual users and institutions: ad companies, libraries, and fashion houses
- In 2009, Vogue editorial and business departments met to plan an archive project, motivated by two primary interests:Preserving the magazine’s historyMonetizing its archival collectionVogue’s attention to its brand and image was a decisive factor in pursuing this and in how design elements played outMove from strictly a product into a functional digital archiveServe as a brand-compatible delivery mechanism for Vogue contentTiming: in 2009, print media was eager to develop digital products for generating new revenue streamsEmulate digital archives of Rolling Stone and PlayboyA consumer-facing product to boost subscriptionsWe ended up outdoing and improving upon both, generating a truly enhanced, integrated archival product
- Editorial Assets and RightsParent department of Library, Digital, and Physical ArchivesHome also to copyright lawyers and legal analystsVogue MagazineEditorial including print and Vogue.comBusiness including sales, marketing, advertising, and licensing divisionsWGSNFashion trend forecasting and advertising companyProquestE-publisher specializing in archival databases of academic and wide range of periodical content
- Work was spread out among various groups:A core in-house team comprised of archivists andlibrarians, project managers, fashion historians, technologists, and lawyersGenerated taxonomies and authority filesHandled all tagging duties and research questionsManaged databases and production environmentsExternal partners in site development and designBuilt custom front- and back-end toolsMaintained security, authentication, and analytics piecesScanning and XML conversion vendors:Facilities in Virginia and India
- Preserve Vogue’s 120+ year publishing catalogCreate a multi-faceted research tool, flexible enough to fit the research and commercial needs of different communities of usersBuild a product that people would want to use, and to pay forDesign had to be elegant, intuitive, user-friendlyWe sought to incorporate functional and aesthetic aspects of e-commerce sites + “next generation catalogs” and OPACs:Breadcrumbs, faceted searching, relevancy rankingsStrong visuals + core metadata displayEstablishing relationships among assets
- *Workflow schematic courtesy of DemetriVasiadis
- Metadata: pulled from OCR and generated by taggers through extensive developmentPrimary objective: standardize dataHierarchical lists of common termsBased off industry standardsVogue usage—vocabulary, syntax, in-house styleUniversal and contemporary terminologyProper termsPeopleTrendsBrands
- We divided everything up into Edit and AdOur concern for Advertisements was providing baseline information not going too far or in detailEdit pages, however, needed to be built out more. We wanted to “deep tag” everything (which we’ve done back through the 1940s
- MontroseDynamic, customizable internal DAM system—3.95 million assetsOne-stop research + licensing functionality across all user groupsCrowdsourcing Fashion ImagesDesigning tagging projects using Amazon Mechanical TurkGeared towards making royalty-free images discoverablePrivate DAM/Photo PortalEnriched, upstream metadata Reconceiving life-cycle of an assetSeveral million additional asset additionWWD ArchiveDigital archive of 100 years of daily WWD issues—over 1 million pagesArchitectural Digest ArchiveDigital archive of 90 years of roughly monthly issues
- In fact, there’s an entire website called “what is digital humanities.com”, created by a practitioner in the field, where every time you refresh the page, another definition pops up.So right away, we have the opportunity to step into this nominal and interpretive space and assert new definitions, or at the very least, new offshoots of ongoing definitions and conceptions.
- Open Syllabus (Columbia, et al.): “An effort to create the first large-scale online database of university course syllabi as a platform for the development of new research, teaching, and administrative tools.”Humanities Studios (metaLAB): “…They combine in-depth research, design thinking, and hands-on training with digital tools and media in an environment that involves sustained cross-disciplinary teamwork.”Women Writers Project (Brown, Northeastern): “…Our goal is to bring texts by pre-Victorian women writers out of the archive and make them accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, scholars, and the general reader. We support research on women's writing, text encoding, and the role of electronic texts in teaching and scholarship.Omeka and Neatline (George Mason):“…a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions”Building Inspector and Map Warper (NYPL Labs):Crowdsourcing and visualization tools, respectively, for using historical mapsScalar (USC):“Born-digital, open source, media-rich scholarly publishing that’s as easy as blogging”
- Image courtesy of NYPL labs“…because the library already functions as a [sic] interdisciplinary agent in the university, it is the central place where DH work can, should be and is being done. DH projects involve archival collections, copyright/fair use questions, information organization, emerging technologies and progressive ideas about the role of text(s) in society, all potential areas of expertise within the field of librarianship.”(Micah Vandegrift)5“…I see libraries playing a role in the collection, re-purposing and organising of data that may lead to further analysis by individual researchers or (sub)departments.”(Ben Showers)6
- “Two points bear comment here. Firstly, digital humanists might not only be the advance guard of a movement of the humanities into the digital world. They might also be, in effect if not intent, narrowing the gap between the commercial and scholarly worlds. For the first time since World War Two, a significant humanist movement has appeared that engages directly with methods and attitudes commonly held in the commercial and governmental worlds. Far from being a flight into cyberspace, the digital humanities might represent an emergent movement out of the ivory tower and back to an engagement with the ‘real world.’ If this is the case, humanists might want to be concerned. Even if the intent isn’t there, the need to control increasingly complex technologies demands a degree of rationalization and control that runs counter to a great deal of our tradition. ”
- “That said, advertising is not at all a new idea in the scholarly community. For many years, publishers of scholarly journals have sold ad space in the back pages of their publications, albeit at fairly modest rates. Today, some content holders have been willing to experiment with Google Adsense, though most examples of substantial support we have observed have come from sponsorship arrangements, not basic advertising.”“For example, an obvious source of value for many projects resides in the content it creates. It may be valuable to those who view it but it may also be valuable to other third party publishers who may find creative ways to reuse it in other works. In this case, selling the content to users is one option; licensing it to third parties is another; and developing a premium version for specific uses – such as broadcast quality video for commercial programmes (fee) versus online viewing of the same clips (free) – is yet another.The technology created in the process of developing a digital resource can also yield real value. Some project leaders may choose to license the use of the platform they have created to others, or to charge a fee for specialised tools, while the underlying content is still freely available. In a similar vein, the expertise that a team develops when undertaking such work can sometimes be leveraged and turned into a fee-for-service activity, as team members consult with other projects, whether in an advisory role, or in helping to build other technology activities in their field.”
- Source: http://remo.det.uvigo.es/pkms_ike/library/index.php