End-User Searching Challenges Indexing Practices inthe Digital Newspaper Photo Archive

  • Authors:

  • Marjo Markkula;Eero Sormunen

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Studies, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland. marjo.markkula@uta.fi;Department of Information Studies, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland. eero.sormunen@uta.fi

  • Venue:
  • Information Retrieval
  • Year:
  • 2000

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Previous research in conceptual indexing methods of imageshas furnished us with refinedtheoretical frameworks characterising various aspects ofimages that could and should be indexedusing textual descriptors. The development of digital imageprocessing technologies has bred abrigade of content-based indexing and retrieval methodsavailable for applications. What the usersneed and in what kinds of environments different indexing andretrieval methods are relevant, hasremained an area of less intensive research work.This article presents the results of a field studyconcentrating on journalists as users of adigital newspaper photo archive. The expressed photo needs,applied selection criteria andobserved searching behaviours in journalists' daily work werecontrasted with the indexingpractices applied by the archivists. The results showed thatthe journalists achieved satisfactoryresults when trivial query terms were available, e.g. whenphotos of named persons were needed.Browsing was the main searching strategy applied by thejournalists, but the system did notsupport browsing well. The access problems faced by the usersin particular photo needs are discussed in detail. The paperconcludes by discussing the potential approaches in developing boththe concept-based and content-based indexing methods as wellas the user interfaces in photo retrieval systems.