Humanities and Social Sciences

Art History

Visual Resources - Digital Images

Madison Digital Image Database

Art History at La Trobe University uses as its digital image management system, Madison Digital Image Database or MDID. MDID is free open source software developed by James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia - a fellow member of International Network of Universities, INU. MDID was jointly developed by the Center for Instructional Technology and the Art History Department at James Madison University.

Not only is it a system for managing digital image collections, but integrates digital images into the teaching and learning process. MDID is elegant, intuitive, and user friendly software for teaching staff and students alike.

Features include: building slideshows using a drag-and-drop light table; manage, organise and archive slideshows; annotate images and slides; viewing images on the web or with ImageViewer in the classroom; offline projector mode presentation module for the lecture theatre, designed with split screen technology; and, printing pdfs or flashcards of lecture and tutuorial slideshow images.

Staff and students are able to organise and present their visual material directly from the MDID database.

James Madison University and MDID development team were awarded an IMLS National Leadership Grant totaling over US$300,000 with the specific target of "Making Connections: Linking MDID to Other Image Systems and Tools". The aim is for MDID users to share seamlessly image content across different image systems dealing with the challenge of interoperability, high-level protocols (API) and Data Exchange with Digital image collections such as ARTstor, PowerPoint, Blackboard, Fedora Flickr, WebCT etc.

Further information on the software can be sourced directly from MDIDwiki website.

For access to MDID, staff and students and La Trobe University use their User id and password. Staff must prefix their userid with "ltu\".