While the hardware to make them truly useful does not yet exist, the Internet offers the means necessary for the creation of virtual image libraries---that is, "collections" of images that may be stored in many places, rather than in a single history of art department's slide library. Indeed, the Internet can be regarded as including such a library already. Any user can locate images, index them as desired, develop his own view of the resources available, and refer to them from his own text regardless of their location. In the near future, with the advent of Uniform Resource Names (URNs), it will be possible to refer to an image on the Internet without knowing where exactly it can be found. (A URN is a logical name for something, as opposed to a URL, which is a pointer to it. URN lookup services must be developed for URNs to be deployed, but work is proceeding on that front. Once such services are ready, you will be able to name an image and retrieve it from wherever it happens to be that is closest to you, cheapest for you, and so on.)
The advantages for the study of the history of art need little emphasis here: Lecturers could fetch all desired images the night before a lecture and make them available for asynchronous viewing by students. Researchers could use large numbers of electronic images---far more than they could store on disks locally, and far more conveniently (though not necessarily faster) than they could manage by using CD-ROMs.
Electronic images are hardly likely to displace 35mm slides as a medium of recording, and archiving, even if slides are no longer used so much for display. Even if we displace slides with electronic images entirely for display, we will still want to return to those slides every so often to make new digitized images as better formats become available. But an image available from anywhere on the planet that has an Internet connection can be more useful than an image that exists in one place only, and so electronic images will come into ever wider use.
For electronic images to be truly useful we must have better electronic encoding formats, higher resolution display devices (preferably cheap ones), and much greater bandwidth. All these things are coming, without regard to the history of art.
We also need useful schemes of cataloguing images. While some agreement on metadata standards for text objects on the Internet may come soon, readers of this journal know full well how much more complex is the cataloguing of images. As it becomes commonplace for users to work in many image collections, it will be increasingly frustrating to have to navigate many cataloguing systems. I suggest that, as a result, a few common and comprehensive systems for cataloguing image collections will develop, based on those now deployed, and that these will be supplemented by other systems for subfields. In any event, everyone may have his own view of the resources available, as images may be addressed directly. Thus a virtual catalogue may be overlaid on disparate collections with their own disparate systems.
But these technical and intellectual developments may not be sufficient for a thousand image libraries to bloom. There remains the sticky problem of supply.
I believe that adequate supply will develop only within a robust market in images, that university and museum history of art slide libraries, which could be among the earliest suppliers of large numbers of images on the Internet, are in good position to affect the shape of the market in images, and that they must attempt to take advantage of that position by leveraging their existing collections and expertise.
Some material will be available for free, as at Prof. Greenhalgh's site [*], where, inter alia, you can find some of my slides of Islamic architecture.
Some material already exists in university and museum slide libraries that can be digitized and served without violating anyone's copyright, and much of the more interesting material in some collections has been obtained from persons who may be persuaded to grant wider use of it. It might well be that university slide librarians could arrange digital distribution arrangements with their brethren in the university presses for such things as architectural plans. And university slide collections are well positioned to obtain the computer resources necessary to serve images in their collections.
All these are steps that could be taken collectively, and without spending much money on intellectual property. But they are insufficient, and the collective model is insufficient, too. Some things just have to be paid for.
Museums could profit from cultivating "electronic membership," which might lead to serving many images to members, perhaps even to making whole collections available electronically. But I don't expect museums to take this point of view without discerning where the money is to be found in it, and serving images to the public at large is rather different as a business proposition from serving them to members only. The museums need a market.
In the market in images and in the use of images on the Internet, those who supply the images must be able to protect their copyright, if any, and should they care. They should be able to obtain money for their intellectual property---and if they can't, you won't be able to find it on the Internet.
Slide librarians and everyone else involved in developing and using university slide libraries have often been able to finesse or ignore certain copyright issues because their use of copyrighted images is small-scale and, as an economic activity, opaque. Those conditions will no longer obtain on the Internet. If you are serving an image, you will likely be serving it to the whole world, and everyone (the whole market including the copyright holder, if any) will be able to see what you're doing.
In the discussion of copyright for electronic media some extreme positions have been taken. Dr. Sandra Walker, head of the Visual Resources Association, remarked in Fall 1994 that she'd really like to be able to make "fair use" of copyrighted images in "distance learning." Such a regime would be so easy to abuse as to discourage anyone interested in profit from serving images at all. Dr. Walker continued:
I would add that the members of our organization believe that compensation for intellectual property rights (i.e. royalty fees etc.) should not prohibit the use of visual or textual materials for teaching and scholarly research. While most of our membership is located in institutional libraries or departments which specialize in images of art works, visual images are not limited to art classes, but may also be used in history classes, English literature classes, anthropology classes, classes exploring cultural diversity and others. We feel that information on the National Information Infrastructure, whether visual images or text, should be available to benefit the broadest spectrum rather than an elite group of users. We feel that information on the National Information Infrastructure, whether visual images or text, should be available to benefit the broadest spectrum rather than an elite group of users. [*]
The politically correct references to "cultural diversity" classes and "an elite group" make it easy to translate the message in the contemporary American political context: "If I can't afford it, give it to me for free or you're a racist." This approach won't help build the market that art historians need.
Instead of trying to get value for free, slide librarians should be trying to figure out what kind of deal they're willing to make with owners of images, particularly museums and existing image vendors to make a few large, distributed image libraries possible. Who is to pay (the user or the site requesting an image)? on what model (by the byte, by the image, on a subscription basis)? and what value can intermediaries such as slide librarians add to the system? A museum might well prefer to have its images presented in a professionally crafted context than to run its own server; there must be many opportunities for partnerships between universities and museums.
All sides in these deals will have to remember that as imaging technology improves, new images will be desired. Copyright holders can periodically produce newly improved digital images; the first digital image of the Mona Lisa you buy may not be your last.
The time is now. The market in images is coming. Slide librarians can catch the wave or let it wash over them. Figure out what slides in your own collection you can serve without copyright problems. If your university press publishes appropriate material (e.g., architectural plans), approach them for contributions. Start sharing this material with cooperating institutions. Build groups large enough to obtain leverage on commercial vendors and museums. And be prepared to pay for value received.
Unfortunately, there is another angle to virtual image libraries on the Internet: it will be difficult to restrict access to a distributed library if that library is meant to be used for education and scholarship. If images can be obtained readily, anyone can use them. Rogue scholars; persons who disagree with institutional norms; even live white men could "teach" the history of architecture without proper institutional approval. Universities would surely not want to grant credit for such "courses," but considering how high tuition is these days, some students might prefer the alternative.
A market in images will make possible a market in teaching and scholarship, undermining the institutional and cultural basis of American education. The challenge for slide librarians and their institutions, then, is not to lobby for changes in the copyright law, but to use their leverage to shape the coming market in images in such ways that they can control the use of the images they serve.