Symposium Report

Drawing heavily from Everett Roger’s “Diffusion of Innovations,” the symposium organizers intentionally drew together 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.

The Symposium on the Adoption of JPEG 2000 was arranged in an arc to take delegates from little assumed knowledge of the 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 accessibility and preservation of digital objects. In the microcosm of the two-day event, the symposium organizers sought to move delegates through the first three steps of Roger's model 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.)

Robert Buckley from Xerox Corporation and member of the JPEG 2000 committee carried out the first third of the arc in a three-hour tutorial on the fundamentals of JPEG 2000. This background provided the foundation of understanding that was used in subsequent discussions of the practical considerations of adopting and applying a JPEG 2000 practice in libraries and archives. At the time of writing, it is anticipated that video and slides from the presentation will be available on the j2kArcLib.info website.

The second part of the arc provided a forum for vendors and practitioners to share their experiences using the JPEG 2000 standard. Presenters addressed 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 remarks, speakers were asked to address these 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 and archive users?
• Would adopting the standard limit interoperability of systems?

The presenters were:

• 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.
• Dr. Michael W. Marcellin, University of Arizona (JPIP Demonstration and Application to Libraries/Archives)
• Colleen Cahill, Library of Congress (Migrating to JPEG 2000 at the Library of Congress)
• Simon Cope, Earth Resource Mapping (Practical JPEG 2000)

At the conclusion of the first day – the first two parts of three parts to the arc – the delegation arrived at roughly the same level of understanding of the complexity of the standard and the unique needs of its various formats. In the last third of the symposium, the delegation identified key tasks and issues to be resolved that are required to smooth the adoption of the standard. The tasks and issues identified at the symposium constitute the remainder of the report.