Indexing images: Testing an image description template

Journal/Book: Proc Asis Annu Meet. 1996; 33: 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055-8750. Information Today Inc. 209-213.

Abstract: This research builds upon previous exploratory research investigating pictorial image attributes typically described by participants in several types of tasks. Participants in the previous research performed describing, sorting, and searching tasks. Content and statistical analyses on the word and phrase data produced twelve conceptual classes of image attributes and forty-eight individual attributes. The results suggested that perceptually stimulated attributes; such as literal objects, the human form, color, and location, are most typically noted when participants were asked to describe images. The current research tested a template for image description to be used by naive image searchers in recording their descriptions of images. The attribute classes derived in the previous research were used to model the image description template. The results indicate that users may need training and/or more guidance in order to correctly assign descriptors to higher-level classes. Thus the template may be of more use to indexers, in guiding decisions about what to index, than as a guide to searchers in formulating structured image search requests. One interesting result is that when participants were exposed to the full range of attribute classes changes from that of the original unprompted descriptions,and matches more closely results from image sorting and searching (as opposed to describing) tasks in the original research. This suggests that image indexing needs to accommodate a wide variety of attributes, including a range of ''perceptual,'' ''interpretive,'' and ''reactive'' attributes.

Note: Article C Jorgensen, SUNY Buffalo, Sch Lib & Informat Studies, Buffalo, NY 14260 USA

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