ORGANIZER / MODERATOR: Beth Wodnick, Princeton University
PRESENTERS:
Endorsed by the Education Committee
Everyone wants a digital image! Researchers expect to have a plethora of information at their fingertips and from anywhere with internet access. The need for digital imaging in collections has risen exponentially and we, as visual resource professionals, need to embrace the idea that imaging is no longer limited to slide scanning and copy stand photography. Many researchers now expect to have digital images of rare books, special collections, historic photographs and graphic materials, to mention a few, available to them quickly and easily. VR professionals are well versed in the ways of digitizing slide collections, but handling and photographing sometimes challenging original material may be a new frontier.
This session will discuss best practices for photographing original material and creating archival images. Presenters will also provide examples of established workflows for gathering, photographing, cataloging and archiving these materials.
Tom Rieger , Director of Imaging Services at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, in Andover, Massachusetts, will provide an overview of the best practices for the care and handling of original materials and the best practices for digital imaging, as defined in the FADGI guidelines. The FADGI guidelines were developed with major imaging centers in mind, but they can be interpreted for use in smaller imaging centers and local initiatives. This discussion will address these differences. The range of medias included in the discussion will include all forms of visual media, from rare books through modern photographic media. An overview of the workflow and digital imaging process at NEDCC will also be presented.
David Dwiggins, Systems Librarian/Archivist at Historic New England, will discuss the evolution of the organization's digitization strategy. As part of its Collections Access Project, the Historic New England has placed images of more than 50,000 items from its collection online since 2010. Although original plans called for outsourcing almost all digitization, investments in equipment and training allowed the organization to produce archival quality, high-resolution images to supply its website, publication programs, and external users. The new direction has made the organization less dependent on grant funding for maintaining digitization activities, and has allowed it to develop internal expertise that reduces costs and increases efficiency. Dwiggins will discuss the challenges and opportunities the organization encountered as it built up its digital imaging capabilities from scratch.
Chris Edwards, Digital Studio Production Manager at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, will discuss his team’s efforts to meet the high demand for digital surrogates of materials for research, web display and publication purposes. The Beinecke Collection is generally too fragile to stand the wear and tear of most traditional mass digitization efforts, and often too valuable to leave the premises for third party digitization so a creative solution was found to meet these high demand needs while still caring for the materials in house. Chris will discuss the implementation of a Rapid Imaging Program creating medium resolution discovery images at the Beinecke Library and how that fits into the workflow while also creating high-resolution, archival images.
