There already exists a large commercial store of images from stock images such as Kodak's Picture Exchange to exotic images of the National Geographic's collection to the inventory of commercial photographers and publishers. The medical and scientific fields produce massive numbers of images annually. Common issues and challenges facing these organizations, communities, and institutions include standards, access, cataloging, and intellectual property rights. Many current image digitizing projects are underway. Although there are a number of accepted capture and storage standards, no one is accepted as the single standard.
Various formats offer varying quality of display or printing options.
Each advance of technology brings new ways of storing and displaying images. Considering the number of current projects and future digitizing projects, a common set of standards needs to be accepted by these disparate communities. In the bibliographic world, the OCLC database exceeds thirty millon records. Description of bibliographic items have a long history of refinement, standardization, and acceptance. Textual information is described similarly no matter what its subject content.