Metadata management, reuse, inference and propagation in a collection-oriented metadata framework for digital images

Digital photography generates a lot more "shoeboxes" of photos than its conventional counterpart, resulting in image search and retrieval being more applicable. We briefly discuss some research challenges faced with the use of metadata in image search and retrieval. We then propose the structural use of metadata regularity of photos within collections (the Group Effect), in metadata management, reuse, inference and propagation. This application of the Group Effect is complemented by the Social Networking Effect whereby user interactions with image collections provide collaborative metadata. This is followed by our presentation of a set-theoretic approach to our framework (proposed in previous work [5,6]) and we then outline its application and utility.