Managing/maintaining an extensive (and ever-growing) photo archive...

[Doug Thompson]

Currently, we are maintaining a photo archive in-house via a networked 1TB LaCie drive and a whole bunch of directories/files (the drive is at around 60% capacity at this point). While this works, it is extremely slow (the network interface of the drive is less-than-desirable, speed-wise). As digital photo sizes increase, the files are getting more and more unwieldy to deal with. And, since the directory structure is essentially made by whomever uploads the photos to the drive, there is a noticeable lack of consistency, which makes searching for a particular photo all the more difficult.

I have seen the discussions about using Flickr as a "sort of" photo archive (albeit more of a "cream of the crop" type of thing rather than an all-encompassing collection of photos), and I think I will attempt to get the "powers that be" around here to look into that more seriously.

However, we still have the issue of how best to maintain the full archive.

One approach that I've seen discussions about is running Gallery2 or Coppermine on a dedicated server, which is certainly something we can do.

Before I investigate that further, I was wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation to me and, if so, what (if any) solution(s) you have found. For example, is there a device out there somewhere that acts as a dedicated photo archive server...maybe even with some sort of Web-based front-end for searching/tagging/etc.?

Any advice anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Doug Thompson
Manager of Web and Electronic Communications
Ohio Wesleyan University

[Amberly Nowak]

If you are looking to go the dedicated server route, you may want to check out Extensis Portfolio and NetPublish. A friend used those at his university. He set up a process for the photographers as far as file structure went. They used NetPublish as the front-facing interface so media and campus groups could search and find photos for sites, press releases, marketing pieces, etc.

We use Flickr for our photo archive. I get a CD of the final set of photos from marketing and then upload the whole batch as a set. It's cheap, I don't have to worry about file space on my hard drive or server, and I can create as many sets and tags as I need.

[Doug Thompson]

The dedicated server route looks to be too cost-prohibitive for our needs, so the Flickr alternative sounds much more...doable.

For clarification, is the "final set of photos" you upload to Flickr a sort of "cream of the crop" of the total photos for any particular event or from any particular photographer? Do you keep any of the remaining photos in some way, or do they get thrown out after the "best of the best" are chosen?

[Amberly Nowak]

The photographers create a CD of what they think are the best shots and I then upload everything to Flickr and store the CD. I use Flickr Uploader to do batch tagging and uploading, and don't really sort through and choose the "best of the best." The downside to this is that I may have 5-10 photos of the same shot, so if I upload 100 photos, I may only really have 50-60 individual shots and the rest are pretty much duplicates. Once I get some work studies back in the fall, I will probably have them sort through things and remove duplicates.

I'm the only one who uses the Flickr account to grab photos, so the process isn't as refined as it should be. I was looking for an easy way to tag and store photos without having to sort through stacks and stacks of CDs when I needed something for the website.

[Doug Thompson]

So when, say, someone needs a photo for a new admissions recruitment piece, they come to you and you use the Flickr account to locate the photo? You don't have the Flickr account shared, public, or otherwise open for others to search through and obtain the photos?

[Amberly Nowak]

Our marketing and photography is actually outsourced to an agency, and they send me a copy of the photography. The marketing pieces and web site are handled separately (web site is in house with the university IT dept), so Flickr was the best way for me to create my own photo database since I don't have access to the agency's photo storage.

I have the account closed to the public because I am the only one that needs access to it, at least right now.

[Doug Thompson]

Thanks for all this useful information. The Flickr route certainly sounds like the way to go for this type of thing. Hopefully some others will comment on this thread in the near-ish future as well.

[Ken Zirkel]

We use "Zenphoto", it's a php application that runs on your server, and it's almost as easy as Flickr. It's a temporary measure, as our library is building a custom image repository system for the university.

I like Flickr for public sharing, but we are leery of using an external hosted solution for important things.