1.) In the absence of a grant supporting the “collection on a platter” and in the presence of enthusiastic work being generated by and for students, have you all considered harnessing their efforts into a carefully-constructed digitization initiative so that the students actually do all that work themselves? Seems like you’re close to doing so, but I wasn’t sure if it had been formally laid out.

2.) WRT to the idea of modeling cloth digitally and Kathi Martin’s work at Drexel, I might suggest getting in touch with folks at (believe it or not) Pixar Animation Studios. In a chapter on the production of Monsters, Inc. in The Pixar Touch: the Making of a Company (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), author David A. Price wrote:

The fur simulation techniques became part of a new program called Fizt (for “physics tool”). After a shot with Sulley [big blue monster] had been animated, Fizt took the data for the shot and added his fur, taking into account his movements as well as the effects of wind and gravity.

The Fizt program also controlled the complex folding and wrinkling movement of Boo’s loose-fitting T-shirt [Boo is the little girl]. In earlier Pixar features, the clothing on human characters stayed unnaturally smooth and did not move independently of the character’s body; in some cases, clothes were essentially painted textures on the character’s skin. The nucleus of the technology that Fizt employed to make Boo’s T-shirt act like a shirt originated with the cloth simulator that senior scientist Michael Kass created for Geri’s jacket in Geri’s Game [an earlier Pixar short].

The deceptively simple-sounding task of animating cloth meant solving the complex problem of how to keep cloth untangled–that is, how to keep it from passing through itself when parts of it intersect (for instance, when a character pinches its clothes by bending its shoulders, elbows, or knees). Kass, joined on Monsters, Inc. by David Baraff and Andrew Witkin, developed an algorithm they called “global intersection analysis” to handle these cloth-to-cloth collisions.

Maybe you or Prof. Martin can get in touch with Kass, Baraff, or Witkin to learn more about what they’ve been doing with Fizt and the realistic digital modeling of cloth. Monsters, Inc. was from 2001, so they’ve probably made significant strides since then.

The Sheet Music Consortium (digital.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic/) is probably one of the better examples of a specialized harvesting network. I’d say that OAIster was always more about testing out the OAI protocols, and I don’t think that good balanced collection development was ever their plan.

I do think there is a place for the kind of specialized repositories (and metadata schema) that you mention, but I worry that they would just be building on the foundations of old content and disciplinary silos. We’re hoping that Opening History (imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/history) can be a place to find a broad spectrum of collections of different types that is narrower in scope than OAIster (see the Collection Development policy here: is.gd/14yNu).

The other question is whether more finely tuned standards are better or worse for large scale aggregations. One one hand, the simplicity of Dublin Core means that it is locally interpreted in extraordinarily creative ways. This makes reliably bringing resources together in useful ways (more than just search and browse) more difficult than you’d think. Maybe more tailored approaches for particular communities would help, but they could breed even further challenges to bringing things together (e.g. did we *really* need two similar standards for art historical materials? I know there’s long and interesting story there…)

Well, plenty more where this came from…look forward to continuing the discussion at Camp!

These are all really interesting – but I specifically wanted to respond to the idea of augmented reality/mixed reality. I can imagine the type of iphone app you describe would really supplement, and in some cases be superior to, a visit to a physical exhibition, where objects are often behind glass in dim light and can only be seen from one angle. Approaching this idea, Drexel and Cornell both have very successfully used QTVR for costume. The eAnthro sites from the University of Texas at Austin are also doing this with bones, and KMODDL at Cornell is doing this with kinematic models.

When all of those sites were presented at our workshop on Digital Objects at Vassar last March, we also heard about some exciting projects that take these ideas to new levels.

In my realm of costume history, I’m very excited about a project Kathi Martin (Drexel University) is working on (and trying to get funding for). In costume history, one of our laments is that the artifacts we work with are far to fragile to be worn, so they function as static objects on display – very different from how clothing follows the moving body in real life. But Kathi’s working with some software developers who are combining flat clothing patterns with animation – so you can see clothing on a moving virtual model. I’d love to have students making realistic avatars of themselves and then “trying on” clothing from 400 years ago. For the last few years there has been some interest in Second Life at Vassar, and given the thriving fashion world there (so I hear), I thought that might be a potential space to view historic fashions on (animated) moving bodies – but I was turned off by Second Life’s proprietary nature – and steep learning curve for users (students). I had a feeling that better stand alone tools would evolve – and sure enough, Kathi’s working on one!

On a different note, Hod Lipson from Cornell University talked about 3D printing as a part of his presentation. We know that many students benefit from hands on interaction with 3D objects, but many schools don’t have access to models that students can work with. Digital surrogates can help to fill that gap, but ideally they are combined with at least a few actual 3D objects for students interaction. Hod’s working on a project for educators to share their virtual models, which others can then download and “print” out their own model.

Both of their presentations really helped me to focus my attention on the 3D, sensory characteristics of the objects I’m working with. For now, that’s taking a non-digital form for me, as I work with fabric and paper to recreate the flat pattern of a costume, which I then will digitize so that anyone can reproduce it. But not long from now, my students will be able to visualize the construction and motion of objects through animation and 3D printing!

altpress.slcpl.org/unioncatalogsoftwareoptions

seattle-zine-unconference.wikispaces.com/Union+Catalog+Sampler

www.archiviststoolkit.org/

You might find it useful for data standardization and customized search.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Just imagine adapting the Google Earth app for the iPhone to objects and artifacts in museums. Just by tillting and rotating their phone, a person could view the object from all angles, zoom in for closer looks, or take a virtual walk through the museum.

3D visualization ideas for digital humanities (which are increasingly possible on smartphones):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Prize-winning software that could help with data standardization and custom searching:

www.archiviststoolkit.org/

Union catalogs:

seattle-zine-unconference.wikispaces.com/Union+Catalog+Sampler

altpress.slcpl.org/unioncatalogsoftwareoptions

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Just imagine adapting the Google Earth app for the iPhone to objects and artifacts in museums. Just by tillting and rotating their phone, a person could view the object from all angles, zoom in for closer looks, or take a virtual walk through the museum.

If this kind of rich visualization was available for this costume project, students just might become more interested in tagging the virtual objects, which could help speed up (but not replace) the cataloging process, and contributing in other ways to the project.

I have also heard good things about this award-winning open-source software platform for archivists:

www.archiviststoolkit.org/

You might find it useful for data standardization and customized search.

For some of the latest discussion of open-source alternatives for union catalogs, check out the following links:

altpress.slcpl.org/unioncatalogsoftwareoptions

seattle-zine-unconference.wikispaces.com/Union+Catalog+Sampler