Symposium Program

The Evolving Story of JPEG 2000

The Symposium on the Adoption of JPEG 2000 is arranged in an arc to take delegates from little assumed knowledge of the JPEG 2000 standard, through an awareness of how it is currently and can be used, to a point where dialog can occur on stewarding the critical aspects of the standard for long-term acessibility and preservation of our digital objects. JPEG 2000 has the potential to revolutionize common practices in libraries and archives. The symposium seeks to start the coordination and acceleration processes by providing a forum for guiding the adoption of the standards in software systems and reaching consensus on parameters of common interest to ensure interoperability.

The Story Thus Far

Robert Buckley from Xerox Corporation and member of the JPEG 2000 committee will carry out the first third of the arc in a three-hour tutorial on the fundamentals of JPEG 2000. This background provides the foundation of understanding that will be used in subsequent discussions of the practical considerations of adopting and applying a JPEG 2000 practice in libraries and archives.

JPEG 2000 for Cultural Heritage Institutions: Metadata, Access & Archiving
Rob Buckley, Xerox Corporation

JPEG 2000 has attracted the interest of the cultural heritage community like no previous image format standard. For those interested in access, image and metadata delivery, possibilities are expanded with the need for image derivatives and supplementary files reduced or eliminated entirely. For those with archiving concerns, metadata management can be simplified, and efforts at assuring data integrity and color fidelity can be more readily sustained. “JPEG 2000” itself designates a family of file formats for single images, multi-page documents and image sequences. It also defines a client/server protocol for delivering and flexibly interacting with images while reducing network bandwidth requirements. JPEG 2000 offers efficient and flexible image compression, while also offering features that can provide new, valuable functions to a wide range of imaging applications. This presentation will take you on a tour of the JPEG 2000 standard, demonstrate its capabilities, and discuss possibilities for its use in digital image access and archiving applications.

Words of Advice from the Early Adopters

The Thursday afternoon sessions provide a forum for vendors and practitioners to share their experiences using the JPEG 2000 standard. Presenters address how use of the standard changes common imaging practices, how the standard is being adopted by developers of software systems, and the issues surrounding the adoption of the standard in the library and archive communities. In preparing their remarks, speakers were asked to address the following questions:

• What functions or capabilities of the standard have led to decisions to use it?
• What are the difficulties of using the standard?
• How does the application of the standard affect current imaging practices?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using JPEG 2000 over other imaging standards?
• What areas of the standard need further development to meet the needs of library & archives users?
• Would adopting the standard limit interoperability of systems?

The presenters are:

• Rutherford W. Witthus, University of the Arts, Philadelphia (JPEG 2000 as an Essential Component of Archival Access: Olson’s Melville Project at the University of Connecticut)
• Dr. Robert A. Morris, University of Massachusetts, Boston (Roaming Metadata Enriched Images for Biodiversity Informatics)
• Dr. Vladmir Misic, Rochester Institute of Technology (JPEG 2000: Web Services for Image Conversion and Document Database Search)
• Rob Mungovan, Aware, Inc.
• Colleen Cahill, Library of Congress (Migrating to JPEG 2000 at the Library of Congress)
• Simon Cope, Earth Resource Mapping (Practical JPEG 2000)

Writing the Final Chapter of the First Volume

At the conclusion of the first day, the symposium organizers expect the delegation to have arrived at roughly the same level of understanding of the complexity of the standard, the unique needs of various formats. Delegate participation in the last third of the symposium is key to advancing the adoption of the standard in the library and archives professions. Through facilitated dialog sessions in breakout groups, the symposium organizers seek to identify the key tasks required to smooth the adoption of the standard and shepherd the formation of ad hoc groups of delegates to carry forward those tasks.

Drawing heavily from Everett Roger’s “Diffusion of Innovations,” the symposium organizers intentionally drew together both policy makers and practitioners, individuals from a variety of backgrounds, and delegates all along the spectrum of innovators/early-adopters/early-majority/late-majority/laggards. Rogers suggests that each member of a community follows a five-step process in making the decision to adopt an innovation:

1. Knowledge occurs when an individual…is exposed to an innovation’s existence and gains some understanding of how it functions.
2. Persuasion occurs when an individual…forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation.
3. Decision occurs when an individual…engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation.
4. Implementation occurs when an individual…puts an innovation to use.
5. Confirmation occurs when an individual…seeks reinforcement of an innovation-decision already made, or reverses a previous decision to adopt or reject the innovation if exposed to conflicting messages about the innovation.

Delegates will participated in two sessions of dialog. In the first, participants in the breakout session are encourage to speak openly with thoughts and ideas related to the topic at hand. After a break, the second session will consider the topic in a more focused manner with the goal of preparing a summary to be presented to the entire delegation at lunch and to be published on the symposium website. After lunch, leaders from each of the breakout groups will present the summary to the entire delegation for further comment and exploration.

And the Story Continues...

In the microcosm of a two-day event, the symposium organizers hope to move delegates through the first three steps of Roger's model (above) in the three parts of the symposium. (It is recognized, of course, that it will take longer than two days for members of the delegation who were previously not familiar to JPEG 2000 to fully commit to the second and third stages.)

What logically follows is the implementation of JPEG 2000 into the practices of libraries and archives by spreading the knowledge to others and reaching concensus on questions that ensure interoperability. The symposium organizers are committed to providing the platform for further conversation through the j2kArcLib.info website. What is required is the energy and efforts of the delegates and the wider community to ensure the coordinated and accelerated adoption of JPEG 2000 in libraries and archives.