Visual Analytics for the image archive of the German Colonial Society (VaBiKo)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Ralph Ewerth; Dr.-Ing. Thomas Risse
• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531013489

The image archive of the German Colonial Society at the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library in Frankfurt houses one of the most important collections of photographs and publications of German colonial institutions, comprising approximately 55,000 image carriers. However, at the moment, the digitized versions of the German Colonial Society image collection are not available in current quality standards and the retrievability of the images is limited by incomplete metadata. This severely limits researchers’ usage of the image collection. The proposed project addresses these concerns and aims to significantly improve access and usability of the German Colonial Society's image archive for researchers. Enhanced access to content for scholarship will lay the foundation for the continued reappraisal of German colonial history. The documentation will be significantly expanded through comprehensive semi-automatic indexing of the image content. The additional metadata generated in the process will serve to improve the searchability of the image holdings. The project will sustainably increase the visibility and findability of the image collection. In addition, the project will address ethical issues related to the use of the collection. The existing interface will be developed into a multilingual portal for interactive, semantic search in image (and text) holdings. The research process will be supported through the following functionalities: - Enhanced exploration and presentation options; - Improved searchability of image holdings and indexing of historical image sources using deep learning techniques; - Interactive visualizations of spatial and temporal information as well as similarity-based grouping of images and the linking of images and text for the historical slideshows; - Enhanced data management according to current standards including improved interoperability (interfaces and APIs).

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)