CHArt Twenty-First Annual Conference

David Ehrenpreis, James Madison University, Virginia, USA.
MDID: Sharing Digital Content in a Global, Open-Source Community.

In 1997, James Madison University (JMU) began the development of the Madison Digital Image Database (MDID), a system for teaching with digital images online and in the classroom. Initially released as free, closed-source software, it was rewritten and published under an open-source license in 2004. Today, dozens of colleges and universities are using MDID. Several other commercial and free digital content delivery systems are also available.

Since 1997, JMU librarians and art history curators have been creating and acquiring digital images for inclusion in MDID from many sources: slides and print media are scanned; instructors take photographs with digital cameras; images are purchased and image collections are licensed through third-party content providers.

MDID is a content delivery system, it is not preloaded with digital images. This paper will examine JMU's efforts to ignite a global network of shared institutional collections within the community of instructors and curators who use digital images in teaching and research and to establish a global repository through which instructors and scholars may share independently-acquired, curator-vetted digital images.

JMU promotes an atmosphere of sharing by freely distributing a quality content delivery system, and recent enhancements to the MDID software now enable institutions to share collections. Sharing software has already led naturally to sharing content: JMU is sharing digital image collections with Grinnell College in Iowa and with Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Since many institutions harbour small, specialized collections of images to which they hold the copyright, MDID will also function as a clearing house under open licensing schemes like ‘public domain’, ‘open content’, and ‘Creative Commons’. This paper argues that adding shared and freely accessible digital content to an open-source content delivery system like MDID will allow institutions to implement quickly and inexpensively a service for teaching and learning with digital images.

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