State of SMK Digital: The Intern Breakdown
By Sofie N. Christensen & Brittany L. Overgaard
Hi, we’re Sofie and Brittany and as interns on the SMK Open project we’ve been given, oh you know the most modest task: to create an overview of SMK’s ongoing digitization of the collections. As interns with fresh eyes we were asked to gather information from all corners of this large institution in order to create a simple factsheet so everyone can be on the same page when talking about the four-year project SMK Open. Seriously, how difficult could that be?
Terminology
We started with the terminology (hey, we’re art history students!).
And it immediately got tricky. We’re all for words like digitization, hi-res and public domain but may we venture the observation that not everyone agrees on their meaning? So we kindly, patiently and with due respect asked photographers, art historians and digital staff what on Earth they were talking about. An effort resulting in the following list:
Digitization: This central term is used in two different ways. Some use it to refer to the act of registering data/metadata on an artwork in a digital collections management system. While others think of it as the creation of actual digital representations (what the experts refer to as “photos”) of artworks that can then be shared online. In the SMK Open project, more broadly, we’ll stick with B.
Public domain: Public domain refers to works of art that are not under copyright of any kind and thus belong to the public. SMK has relinquished all rights to its photos so pictures of out-of-copyright art are public domain and can be freely reproduced and used as everything from a shower curtain to a sweatshirt, remixed, or shared with others. Danish picture copyright expires when artists have been deceased for 70 years and their creations then technically belong to the public.
High resolution: We use pixels (width and height) to describe the resolution of a picture. Interestingly (in a way) some art museums like to think of their photos as having a PPI (pixels per inch) or a DPI (Dots Per Inch), which indicates the degree of detail as compared to the original artwork. But most people probably find this confusing and likely don’t care about the physical dimensions of the original art. For the purposes of SMK Open, we’re talking about resolution as simply the number of pixels. When we say hi-res, we’re referring to images of at least 3200 pixels on the long end. Yes, we know — it’s somewhat arbitrary and of course bound to change.
How did they get here?
Over the past few years SMK has been working towards freeing up the museum’s digital files. This is possible due to the public domain principle enabling the museum to make the highest resolution images available for download on its own website www.smk.dk or through projects such as Wikipedia Commons and Europeana. But with a sizable collection it is a challenging task to get everything online, in the highest resolution possible. Currently, everything that has been digitally registered, as well as digitized images, is available through collection.smk.dk but the quality of the digital material varies a lot and there is no application for easily downloading the images. A precursor to SMK Open can be found on the current SMK website titled Art Stories. Art Stories was developed under the project SMK Digital, where selected works of art were each given a page with everything from a high resolution picture, that can be zoomed in on to see minute details, to text written by different researchers. But, one must keep in mind that this project only involved a small amount of artworks. Right now at http://www.smk.dk/brug-af-billeder-og-tekst/vaerker-til-fri-download/ 160 public domain pictures in high resolution are available for download by whoever, whenever and to be used for whatever. These images are curated works of art chosen and carefully researched to give you the best photographic reproduction and best scholarly research possible.
Our results
As interns, we would never imply that SMK is anything but highly organized. Let’s simply say that getting at the numbers has required a little bit of digging. But, all’s well that ends well, and here’s where we stand (subject to change — which is the whole point):
- 70.555 works from SMK’s collection are digitally registered.
- 47.034 works are in the Public Domain.
- 42.711 works have a digital reproduction.
- 21.125 works are hi-res according to the standard defined above.
- 15.000 works are in high resolution as well as Public Domain, and can be used freely by anyone. (…but they aren’t really easily available for download on the current website collection.smk.dk).
Now what?
In its present condition, a user of the museum’s online is able to access and see a lot of pictures but only a small number is of a high enough quality to enable versatile use. For example: old recordings transferred from old 35mm slides are counted as digitized but a blurry black and white picture is of no use if what you want is a vibrant P.S. Krøyer shower curtain (and hey, of course you do).
SMK Open revitalizes previous efforts but on a much larger scale. Each digitized work of art will have its own landing page with the most recent research from several museum professionals, videos and hi-res images available for download. In a dream world each work in SMK’s vast collection would be digitized in this manner but this utopia has no fixed arrival date. Till then, the museum will work hard to make as much available as possible for the public.
That is the future — that is what this project is about; it is about access and openness to a collection that is in all actuality owned by everyone.
