"SPIRO can be accessed using either Image Query, a powerful database retrieval package, or the World Wide Web. ImageQuery2.0 was developed originally by UC Berkeley's Information Systems and Technology, Advanced Technology Planning (ATP) Office under the direction of Barbara Morgan. ImageQuery2.0 is currently maintained by the Museum Informatics Project (MIP). ImageQuery SPIRO permits access to the collection by ten access points: period; place; creator name; object name; view type; subject terms from the Art and Architecture Thesaurus; source of image; creation dates; classification number; image identification number. The vast majority of images in SPIRO are copyrighted."
IMAGES 1 (on-line images of the National Library of Australia's Pictorial Collection) contains over 15,000 historical and contemporary images relating to Australia and its place in the world, including paintings, drawings, rare prints, objects and photographs. The images have been selected from more than 40,000 paintings, drawings and prints and more than 550,000 photographs held in the National Library's Pictorial Collection. Topics covered include first impressions of Australia, convict days, gold mining and Australian towns.
IMAGES 1 offers a number of search options to enhance access to the images including searching by the creator (for example photographer or artist; other names associated with a work or collection; title; subject; the image number in the database; and by format (for example, watercolor or photograph).
Founded in 1989 by Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft, Corbis is a main provider of visual content and services in the digital age, offering more than 20 million photographs and fine-art images (and 1,3 on-line) for access worldwide via the Internet, on CD-ROM disc, and through traditional stock catalogs. The images includes contemporary stock photography, photojournalism, archival photography, and royalty-free images, available to both creative professionals and private consumers.
7.4. Future Trends for Digital Libraries
The quick development of digital libraries leads us to define the role of the digital library, a very recent concept, relating to the much older "traditional" library, and vice versa.
In the same way that the paper document is not going to be "killed" by the electronic document, at least not in the near future, many librarians believe the "traditional" library is not going to be "killed" by the digital library.
When interviewed by Jérôme Strazzulla in Le Figaro of June 3, 1998, Jean-Pierre
Angremy, president of the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de
France) stated: "We cannot, we will not be able to digitize everything. In the
long term, a digital library will only be one element of the whole library".
Digital libraries give instant access to many works in the public domain. They also give instant access to old and rare texts and images. The full-screen images are still quite long to download, so many sites were backed up to present small images, so as not to ask too much from the cybernaut's patience. Most of the time a bigger format can be requested by clicking on the selected image. This problem should be solved in the future with improvements in data transmission.
The digital libraries also further the textual research on one or several works at the same time, such as the works of Shakespeare, Dante's Divine Comedy, different versions of The Bible, etc.