Promised too much? AI in use in the image archive of the ETH Library

Abstract

With 3.6 million photographs – from the period between 1860 and today, the Image Archive of the ETH Library in Zurich is one of the largest historical image archives in Switzerland. Since 2021, the Image Archive uses artificial intelligence for content-based image indexing, in addition to intellectual indexing, and for the translation of metadata. Users benefit from additional research options. The automatically generated tags are closer to everyday language and go into more detail. The Image Archive uses autotagging in a complementary way: It does not replace the intellectual work with the subject headings but complements it. Although the autotags produced good results on average, a quality check was initiated. After analysing 75% of the autotags, the deletion rate was around 50 to 70%. While the computing time is considerable, the financial effort is negligible. In view of the initial processing, which took over 16 months, the question arose as to whether the computational effort required to generate the autotags was worthwhile at all. An online survey provided insights into the acceptance of the autotags on the one hand and the research techniques of the users on the other.