Enhancing the Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-Engraved Illustration (DMVI; www.dmvi.cardiff.ac.uk/)

This application seeks funding to guarantee the long-term sustainability and increased impact of a much-valued resource developed through previous AHRC funding: the Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-Engraved Illustration (2004-7; DMVI; www.dmvi.cardiff.ac.uk/). The proposal grows out of two other AHRC projects: an ICT Methods Network Workshop on 'Annotating Images' (2007) and a Museums, Galleries and Libraries Network (LICAU 2007-8). The PIs for these projects (Thomas, Rana, Skilton) have united to develop this proposal and pool their expertise and contacts across different sectors. The application exploits recent technical advances not only to improve DMVI as it now exists, but to enhance it so that it can become the core for more extensive database work with literary illustration.

DMVI's unique value to humanities research lies in its digitised storage and bibliographic and iconographic descriptions of almost 900 illustrations that accompanied literary texts in 1862, a key year in the so-called 'golden age' of illustration. The images and metadata are accessible on a fully-searchable website. DMVI has played a major role in elevating the status of illustration. The project was graded 'outstanding' by AHRC assessors, who commented on its significance across the fields of print culture, visual arts and cultural history. A review in the Journal of Victorian Culture said DMVI 'raises the entire profile of illustration as a semi-autonomous category and a proper field for scholarly investigation' (13:1, 108-113).

This proposal arises because of the widespread recognition that DMVI's significance is considerably more extensive than originally envisaged. Its iconographic system has been adapted by other Victorian databases (see Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition http://www.ncse.ac.uk/index.html), while its structures have been used in diverse image-based projects: the Victorian Manchester Image Database (http://web.leedstrinity.ac.uk/history/mh/dmvi/index.html) and Illustrating Scott (http://illustratingscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/index.html). DMVI images have also been requested for use by TV, film and publishing companies, graphic designers, community and tourism websites, and the heritage industry.

Recognising the major impact of DMVI in such a range of academic and commercial contexts, this proposal seeks to guarantee its sustainability and enhance its impact as follows:

1. Ensuring technical sustainability by converting the data to MySQL. For archiving purposes, a version of DMVI will be deposited with key image repositories (e.g. NINES, (http://www.nines.org/; Europeana, http://www.europeana.eu/portal/).
2. Increasing the impact of content by the mapping of ICONCLASS codes, enabling browsing in languages other than English and cross-searching between DMVI and third-sector collections worldwide.
3. Allowing for community editing, first, by providing an interface for the addition of new records, allowing non-specialists to add material, and accommodating new fields for medium, date, language and verbal context; second, by exploring the use of community tagging to generate meaningful and authoritative data.
4. Enhancing the search facility to permit further development and the implementation of the database mechanisms in other contexts.
5. Developing an open source Image Management System, so that users (academics or others) can develop their own image-based datasets based on DMVI. This follows the successful adaptations by the Victorian Manchester Image Database and Illustrating Scott.
6. Creating impact in schools through teaching-support sites and resources, with the advice of a consultant from the Institute of Education.

By these developments, the significant existing benefits of the AHRC's investment will be multiplied by turning DMVI into a resource with international cross-sector reach and by enabling a broad range of users to directly contribute to the further growth of a rich, multifaceted resource.

DMVI has already achieved impact: it averages 4500 unique visits per month; images have been used by ITV, VBS.TV, Radiant Films (Australia), Dundurn National Historic Site (Ontario), community and tourist websites, marketing agencies, and international publishers including OUP. After DMVI, we ran four AHRC-funded workshops to examine the database and recommend further development: an ICT Methods Network Workshop and three Museums, Galleries and Libraries Workshops (LICAU; Literary Illustration: Conservation, Access, Use). With the PIs of all three projects on the present team, we confidently identify the following requirements to increase the impact of this unique resource:

1. Ensuring the long-term sustainability of DMVI so as to enable the growth of awareness and use to develop within and across sectors and groups

Re-writing the database in MySQL to make it sustainable for longer and compatible with NINES etc. will increase its potential use and enable the planning of future developments, particularly expanding the amount of content. Compatibility will lead to listings and links through more heavily used portals.

2. Making the DMVI format available to other users so as to ensure technical and methodological impact

Making the DMVI format available through an Open Source Image Curation System to individuals and institutions builds on previous successful adaptations and will ensure optimal use of the database. This freely-available resource will have widespread applications, from dedicated image repositories (museums, galleries etc.) to members of the general public managing personal photograph collections. Thus, this project intends not only to enhance DMVI but also to contribute to a solution to the larger, more general problem of orphan data-sets.

3. Enlarging the number of expert users so as to create increasing amounts of secondary impact as their own work reaches new audiences and users

Developing a new interface for the input of records and accommodating new fields for medium, date, language and verbal context will open up the database to a wider range of material and new constituencies of users. This would enable scholars working in other fields (e.g. gender, sub/urban studies etc.) to add their own records to the database. Enhancing the search capability of DMVI will make the database more user-friendly, and hence increase the efficacy of use for both scholars and commercial users looking for specific pictorial features.

4. Enrolling new categories of users so as to create impact beyond expert users

Developing a social network for the community tagging of images will allow us better to understand how different groups 'read' images. Currently, the annotations on each illustration conform to a particular data model (based on the categories we have already defined). However, we wish to ascertain whether additional categories could be added through the inclusion of different user groups, and whether these can add unforeseen value to the resource. This will provide a springboard for future ICT projects. We also aim to enhance educational impact by opening up DMVI as a teaching resource in schools by disseminating pedagogic examples of the use of the database through teaching-support websites and direct contact with primary and secondary schools. The enhanced DMVI will also be on interactive display in the House of Illustration (the proposed museum at King's Cross) for the benefit of the general public and tourists.

5. Extending the language capabilities of DMVI so as to allow multilingual access and compatibility with gallery and museum databases

Producing an ICONCLASS interface to the iconographic search facility will allow searching of the database in French, German and Italian and ensure its compatibility with image collections around the world, making DMVI available internationally to comme