Digital image archival systems for compiling data about the built environment:

This aspect of work ties into the Digital Image Center (DIC) in the Fine Arts Library at the University of Virginia. Ongoing work in the DIC supports this research project in several ways. Documenting the urban history of Charlottesville involves digital imaging technology. For example, digitized urban plans of comparable settings within North America have been considered as we explored initial settlement patterns and the changes that occur under the influence of individually identified factors. The DIC promotes more synthetic and perhaps unexpected associations among urban precedents than those that might be identified through traditional graphic, statistical, and representational approaches. In the area of housing, the DIC assists in collecting and cataloguing options and combinations that one can extract from the vernacular architectural history and vernacular traditions of this region.