One of the challenges when designing image databases in the humanities is to provide interfaces that are drawn from the object being represented rather than from the technology used. In this paper we will discuss an image database of over 400 images that was built by a team of graduate students and faculty at McMaster University. The images relate to carving technique on Trajan's Column, one of the most extensive and important surviving sculptural monuments of ancient Rome. In addition to various text-based search tools, we also created a cartoon sketch interface to the entire frieze of Trajan's Column that allows users to move around a virtual column to access the images and to see them in narrative context. This virtual column is an example of a content driven interface to an image collection that is based on the subject matter of the collection. Trajan, Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117, has generally been remembered as a 'good' emperor. A gifted general, he was close to his soldiers and led them on a number of campaigns which substantially expanded the Roman empire. Two of these campaigns, the first and second Dacian wars, are commemorated on Trajan's column: a 100 foot tall marble column decorated with a continuous, upwardly spiraling, sculpted frieze. The scenes on this frieze are an invaluable source of information about many aspects of Roman military practice, imperial ideology, and also sculptural technique. The column still stands today in its original place in the Forum of Trajan in Rome, but, due to its great height, visibility of individual scenes from the ground is quite limited; students and scholars must often rely on old photographs and plaster casts for the study of many details. In 1997 a team of graduate students and faculty at McMaster University were given access to a unique collection of over 400 slides taken by Peter Rockwell and Claudio Martini when Trajan's Column was being restored and had scaffolding around it. The images are primarily of details that show carving technique. In addition we were given access to a series of cartoon sketches of the entire column that show the narrative of the frieze. The challenge was to create an image database that would provide a context for these photographs so that scholars and students of Roman art could use these resources easily. The WWW site is located at <http://cheiron.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~trajan/>. In this paper we will do the following:

• 1. Discuss the background of the project.
  
  This project was initiated by Peter Rockwell who was looking for a venue for making his collection of slides available to the research and education community. While he had published on the column, the full collection of images on which his research was based could not be published economically. A WWW site seemed the most effective way to make this collection available. The team was limited by the fact that the slide collection was in Rome, Italy and could not be removed to Canada for digitization. In this paper we will discuss the steps taken to digitize the images on site and build the database from information gathered by Peter Rockwell as part of his research.
• 2. Discuss the technical design of the WWW