AOIM = AVM? VAMP contacts, anyone?

[Frederic V. Hessman]

For those of you who haven't noted: http://www.virtualastronomy.org/07-10-24VAMP.pdf

I quote:

An image on a website is only as informative as the text that happens  
to lie near it. VAMP will greatly
enhance the value of these assets by tagging astronomical imagery  
following the Astronomy
Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard. This includes key information  
such as sky coordinates,
descriptions, common name, and subject matter (using a standard  
taxonomy). The International
Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) has already endorsed the AVM  
standard, but it has not gained
worldwide recognition partly because of lack of visibility, and partly  
because of the lack of resources to
generate the necessary “momentum” in the community (a well-known  
obstacle for all standards in the
starting phase).

The scope of AVM is specifically tailored to public-friendly  
astronomical images, allowing systematic
indexing of source material even for complex multi-colour composites  
from multiple observatories.
However it also encompasses artist’s concepts and diagrams,  
simulations, and photography.
Ultimately it could be extended to cover a broader range of multimedia  
resources like videos,
podcasts, and so forth. The first phase of VAMP will focus on  
astronomical imagery and will underpin
a larger future effort encompassing all multimedia products related to  
astronomy.
AVM tags are based on elements from two key standards, tailoring them  
to the specific needs of
outreach-style imagery. The International Press Telecommunications  
Council (IPTC) has a
recommended set of metadata tags for describing photography assets for  
use in the publishing
industry. The IPTC tags are commonly embedded directly within image  
file headers using Adobe’s
Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP), and such tags are used by  
virtually all media management
software packages. Where possible, AVM tags are mapped directly into  
established IPTC fields to be
immediately accessible within these common packages.

The IVOA also has a set of metadata descriptors specific to  
astronomical datasets. AVM follows these
conventions as appropriate. A number of extensions have been defined  
to address the needs of the
outreach community further. Full World Coordinate System (WCS) tags  
can be used to describe fully
the position, orientation, and scale of the image while allowing for a  
variety of applications requiring
the full coordinate context. Libraries of images with WCS coordinates  
can be used in many ways
independent of VAMP: Simple Image Access Protocol (SIAP) server for  
positional queries, Virtual
Observatory (VO) integration etc.

The ancillary benefits of utilizing a standard set of metadata in the  
community is that image archives
with AVM tags will be directly useful to publishers and casual users  
with media management software
due to AVM integration with standard “photographic” IPTC/XMP metadata  
tags.

Do we have the most recent AOIM (apparently, now called "AVM", so we  
may need to change names) taxonomy?  What does IPTC/XMP look like?  If  
the VAMP people are putting a lot of effort into tools, do they use/ 
know about SKOS?  I confess that I have no real personal ties to the  
people involved.  Anybody know any of the authors?
Lars Lindberg Christensen
Adrienne Gauthier
Robert Hurt
Ryan Wyatt
Bruce Berriman (contributor)
Curtis Wong (contributor)

Rick

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