Welcome to a new way to explore eHive! The eHive.com home page has been revamped and there are extended options for searching for objects on the public website.

Explore eHive records through the Recently Added Objects, Popular Objects, and Catalogue Type lists, or views records through our links on the most popular Object Types.

From the count next to each Object Type, we can see that there are more photographs than any other medium.

You can use the search box to look for any objects recorded in eHive, which now includes over 1 million objects. At the time of writing, there are 3,571 boats, 172 bras and 12,477 records to do with brass bands.

When you’re on the search results page you can refine your search even further with different facets. You will find a range of facets (or filters) on the left side of the page.

These filters give a whole new dimension to searching eHive. You could restrict your search to only records with images, or only the records related to a particular maker. You could refine your search for plants so that your results only showed you records of Object Type photograph or fossil.

Once a single record has been selected, then you will see high resolution copies for some images using pan and zoom options added earlier this year.

You can read more about this new way of treating images here.

How to get your records ready for Faceted Search

This new faceted search functionality may have you revisiting your records to see how they will be affected.

The search box will search all text in the object record, so you do not have to move terms to specific fields for them to be searched.

You may want to see what other terms might make your objects easier to find or more relevant to the visitor. You may want to add Object Type, Maker, Subject and Association Keyword, Images and Documents to your records to give better access to your collection.

You can also add tags to your object records. Find out more about how to add tags and comments .

We’re now working on extending the search facets options into the logged in application (my.ehive.com) for eHive account holders to make use of. This will be available in December 2019.

Improved image storage and viewing tools

eHive has added some new features for images. You can now upload larger images and have tools to pan and zoom into the detail. You can still include multiple images in a record and define the square crop thumbnail.

Here’s an example of a cameo lamp with a publicly accessible high resolution image:
https://ehive.com/collections/6335/objects/991404/cameo-lamp-carved-into-a-red-helmet-conch-shell

In the background we have been working to offer more options to host large images. To meet best practice we have employed the International Image Interoperability Framework (or ‘triple I – F’ as it’s commonly known) to make this happen. You can find out more about IIIF here and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

What is changing

Support for larger images

You can now upload larger images to eHive and then view them in greater detail. In the past you had the option to store original images, but the image could only be viewed in eHive at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels.

Original images are ALWAYS retained and these use up your eHive storage allocation

You can upload images up to 20 MB (we will be reviewing this image size restriction with a plan to increase this) and you have the ability to view them at their full size within eHive.

However, we have simplified the way we store images and calculated your account storage use. The image you upload is now always kept and will use up storage space according to the image size. You MUST resize images down to the size you wish to store in eHive otherwise you will end up using up your storage allocation more quickly. We encourage you to store larger images as this will provide better access to your collection team, and also to public visitors as well if you choose to.

Controlling the image size public visitors have access to

You’ll have access to the original image when you’re signed in, and you can choose what size images that the public viewers have access to. You can restrict the public view of your images to the current 800 x 800 pixels display maximum (as you do know), or  (depending on the copyright licence) you can provide higher resolution images.

By default eHive will ONLY provide access to the original size image on images marked as No Copyright Restrictions (public domain). You can choose to allow access to the original image for other licences. You can review and change these settings when you’re logged in. Go to Account Settings > Preferences and Data Access. Read more about this in our help topic on Internal Account Settings.

Image size

You can still choose the image size that is displayed on eHive. This is also aligned to the Public Access Settings by default.

If a record is classified as All Rights Reserved then the default public view of the associated images will be 800 x 800 pixels.

If the record is classified as No Copyright Restrictions then the largest available image will be displayed publically with pan and zoom functionality.

These default settings can then be customised by the record or by the individual image.

Upload small image = Display small image

Upload large image = Display large image

Upload large image = Display small image

Any questions?

We have recalculated the amount of storage used by individual eHive accounts to March 2019 levels. If you have to this date chosen to store original images in your eHive account you will now have access to these larger size images in eHive with exactly the same storage use as before.

eHive will no longer automatically resize images at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels. If you wish you conserve the storage of your eHive account by only uploading smaller images you will have to resize these images before uploading them to eHive. This blog post offers some advise on resizing images.

If you have any questions please contact us and we will be happy to talk with you.

Why do you need to resize images

Up to this point eHive has had a maximum image size of 800 x 800 pixels. This included an option to keep the original image, but the image that appeared on the eHive account remained at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels.

With the new improvements to eHive launched in March 2019 you can attached images up to 20 MB. These can now be viewed in eHive with the pan and zoom features. Of course this is optional and you can choose to only allow public access to images at a maximum of 800 x 800 pixels as we always the case.

In the past eHive would have automatically reduced the size of images over 800 x 800 pixels. Going forward you will need to make sure that the images you are uploading are the scale you wish to display. In some cases this will require you to resize your images prior to uploading them.

Software

The following are applications that you can use to resize images.

Adobe Photoshop (Paid)

Affinity Photo (Paid, Mac only)

Preview (on Mac)

Fotosizer (Free, Windows only)

Gimp (Freeware)

Online platforms

The following are online software (SaaS) that you can use the resize images

PicResize

ResizeImage

WebResizer

Managing Image Collections

When you resize your images it is best practice to save the original image so that you can always return to the original at a later date. Following that you can save your new resized image. Take a minute to think about what you will name the image. Popular naming conventions often include accession numbers, object ID’s or dates to help keep images organised.

Here is a good summary of Managing Image Collections from the University of Michigan