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The Imago Project grew out of the success of the UTMuSI Scientific Instrument inventory and its associated web museum. Although the Web has had difficulty developing into the great education (=textual) resource its early proponents envisioned (although here a re notable exceptions), it does serve as an ideal repository of images with brief textual descriptions.
One area which has yet to be targeted is a general image database for the teaching of and research in the history of science and technology. Imago seeks to fill this gap. At the same time, IHPST has since the 1970s housed approximately 3000 35mm slides from the collections of the late professors John Ackland and John Abrams. Since the medium of photopositives is in many respects a dated technology and does not readliy lend itself to resource sharing, it was decided to catalogue the collection and at the same time to digitize those images worth disseminating on the Web.
At the urging of Janis Langins, the director of IHPST, and through the generosity of a University of Toronto's Curriculum Development Fund and matching funds from the School of Graduate Studies and IHPST at the University of Toronto, Imago was born. During the 1999-200 academic year, the web database will be set up, the collection organized, prioritized, and selectively digitized, and the resulting images uploaded for general access. It is hoped that the project will continue to grow in future years, under the tutelage of the professors at IHPST and through student research assistantships in IHSPT and other interested departments.
Placing these images on the Web has raised a number of interesting Copyright issues. While much of the web seems to operate under the "wait and see" attitude for whether any images placed upon it will be cited for copyright infringement, Imago does not plan to operate under such a cavalier attitude. Most of the images that will form the core of the database come from the original 35mm positive slides held by the department; we therefore hold that copyright. Many more images, it is hoped, will be donated by others who hold the original negatives. In the future, some publishers may be contacted for permission to put up images from some particularly useful reference books (e.g., Oxford University Press for images from Charles Singer, et al., A History of Technology)
Once the Ackland and Abrams slide collections are made fully available, the project plans to begin using the University of Toronto's rich library holdings from before 1925 to augment the image database. All images from these books will therefore be in the public domain under the existing 75-year Copyright Regulations. In particular, the collection of "Old Class" material at the Gerstein Science Information Library will provide a wealth of images for Imago.
Questions, Comments, and Suggestions for the Imago Project are Always welcomed and may be directed to the appropriate source:
General Inquiry: imago@chass.utoronto.ca
Technical Database Issues: Steve Walton (webmaster) at swalton@chass.utoronto.ca
Queries for IHPST: ihpst.info@utorotno.ca
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