On-line picture databases

Laboratories, institutes and universities have over the past ten years taken up a technological and organisational challenge: the management of electronic databases. Such systems are built on three main points: a documentation base, a collection of files and an interactive catalogue. Structured information gives the benefit of a better dissemination of information which becomes permanently available for long term access over the Internet.
The CERN has long experience with such a system as it has managed one 
since 1991 in the CERN central library, with documents such as preprints. Increasingly today, scientific communication is carried out via the exchange of multi-media data, such as photographs and videos. The CERN on-line picture database is a collection of interesting and historically relevant photographs. 2500 digitised items including photographs, charts and drawings can currently be accessed via the World Wide Web interface, at http://weblib.cern.ch/Photos/. During this talk, the construction of this database will be explained. Special aspects of photograph management will be underlined. Demonstrations of the catalogue will be made.