Members of the public are being asked to tag a digital database of oil paintings as part of a project to give everyone online access to the estimated 200,000 publicly owned paintings in the UK by 2012.
The Your Paintings project is a joint initiative between the BBC, which is funding the development of the website, and the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF).
The website, which was launched in June, enables people to search for artworks and find out more about them and where they are housed. By 2012, the PCF, aims to have digitised about 200,000 works from more than 3,000 institutions – 80% of which are either in storage or in buildings that the public cannot access.
Andrew Ellis, the director of the PCF, said: “No country has ever embarked on such a monumental project to showcase its entire painting collection, working with communities and individuals all over the country. [It is] only possible thanks to the advent of digital technologies, and the unique resource of the BBC.”
Registered users will be able to search paintings by various criteria and view larger images, while collections will be able to update their painting records. The project is also using crowdsourcing to create metadata about works. By looking at the works in detail, users can tag these with subject classifications and keyword information.
The PCF, a charity, was set up in 2003 to photograph and record all paintings in publicly owned collections in the UK. It has been working with the BBC to digitise these works since 2009.
www.bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings
The Your Paintings project is a joint initiative between the BBC, which is funding the development of the website, and the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF).
The website, which was launched in June, enables people to search for artworks and find out more about them and where they are housed. By 2012, the PCF, aims to have digitised about 200,000 works from more than 3,000 institutions – 80% of which are either in storage or in buildings that the public cannot access.
Andrew Ellis, the director of the PCF, said: “No country has ever embarked on such a monumental project to showcase its entire painting collection, working with communities and individuals all over the country. [It is] only possible thanks to the advent of digital technologies, and the unique resource of the BBC.”
Registered users will be able to search paintings by various criteria and view larger images, while collections will be able to update their painting records. The project is also using crowdsourcing to create metadata about works. By looking at the works in detail, users can tag these with subject classifications and keyword information.
The PCF, a charity, was set up in 2003 to photograph and record all paintings in publicly owned collections in the UK. It has been working with the BBC to digitise these works since 2009.
www.bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings