Tropy is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

desktop

knowledge organization Knowledge organization (KO), organization of knowledge, organization of information, or information organization is an intellectual discipline concerned with activities such as document description, indexing, and classification that serve to ...

application that helps users manage and describe photographs of research materials. It was developed by the

Center for History and New Media Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virgini ...

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was orig ...

. Photos imported into Tropy can be combined into single items, described with metadata that is applied in bulk or created with custom metadata templates, annotated with research notes, and tagged in accordance with a researcher's preferred mode of organization. Tropy acknowledges the ways in which that "digital photography and less-restrictive archival policies on digital reproduction for personal use" have transformed the ways that archives and their communities of users conduct research. Workshops on Tropy have been held by libraries at Brown University,

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in Charlotte, North C ...

, and

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Te ...

Features

Tropy does not seek to be photo editing software, a citation manager, a writing platform, or an online exhibit platform. Tropy seeks to address the challenges of the now-common experience of researchers photographing objects in archives. Tropy allows users to group a collection of photos into a single document, apply multiple tags to photos to allow for organization, and provide annotations and notes to individual items and groups of items. Material in Tropy can also be exported to

JSON-LD JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a method of encoding linked data using JSON. One goal for JSON-LD was to require as little effort as possible from developers to transform their existing JSON to JSON-LD. JSON-LD allows data ...

and

Omeka Omeka (also known as Omeka Classic) is a free, open-source content management system for online digital collections. As a web application, it allows users to publish and exhibit cultural heritage objects, and extend its functionality with theme ...

to allow collaboration with others. Items are organized through a drag-and-drop interface, and can search the users' collections. Currently, the platform accepts

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

, PNG,

SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium sinc ...

AVIF AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is an image file format specification for storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 in the HEIF container format. It competes with HEIC, which uses the same container format built upon ISOBMFF, but HEV ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

HEIC High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) is a container format for storing individual digital images and image sequences. The standard covers multimedia files that can also include other media streams, such as timed text, audio and video. HEI ...

, JP2,

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

TIF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

WEBP WebP is an image file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency. Google announced the WebP format ...

file formats.

Financial support

The

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pit ...

funded Tropy's development. Tropy's public released happened in October 2017. As of 2021, it is maintained by the

Corporation for Digital Scholarship The Corporation for Digital Scholarship (CDS) is a nonprofit technology organization based in Vienna, Virginia, dedicated to developing open-source software for researchers and cultural heritage institutions. It was created in 2009 at the Roy R ...

References

External links

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Support and discussion forums

Source code repository
{{Authority control Reference management software Free reference management software Library 2.0 2017 software Software using the GNU AGPL license

Features

Financial support

See also

References

External links