Digitization

Founded with a mission to enhance scholarship and teaching through the use of digital images and media, Artstor is a nonprofit organization committed to digital collection solutions for universities, museums, schools, and libraries worldwide.(Description taken from the website)

The American Memory historical collections at the Library of Congress are the product of a permanent commitment to explore and establish the best practices of digitization, online presentation and access, and digital preservation of historical materials. The information on this page documents current solutions to technical challenges and solutions devised and implemented in the past. (Description taken from the website)

This recently revised publication is designed to guide museum managers through the planning and implementation of a digitization project. It covers issues such as non-digital images, the taking of new photographs, the exposure and care of objects, copyright, storage and much more.

The updated Small Museum version of the "Capture Your Collections" online training course has been specially designed to help volunteers, curators and managers working in regional, local and specialist museums, to better manage the process of image digitization.

While institutions continue to develop an array of digital content, and products, they often do so without giving enough consideration to the ongoing efforts and resources required to ensure their long-term viability. This case study explores how the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) successfully conceived and implemented a strategy to digitize its permanent collection and develop a durable database infrastructure. It offers a number of lessons for other institutions looking for ways to develop their own capacities and infrastructures, even if that development is more modest or takes place incrementally. The case study also features a useful Health Check Tool for Digital Content Creators in Cultural Heritage Institutions, developed in conjunction with the U.K.'s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the U.S.-based Ithaka S+R.

A metadata standard for digital images. The DIG35 Specification includes a "standard set of metadata for digital images" which promotes interoperability and extensibility, as well as a "uniform underlying construct to support interoperability of metadata between various digital imaging devices."

The number and variety of digital assets that are created and managed by museums is increasing every day. The purpose of Digital Asset Management (DAM) is to apply best practices to the creation, cataloguing and storage of assets so that they can be easily located, used and reused when needed. This resource introduces the concept of DAM and how it may benefit your museum's activities.

This document provides guidelines and a set of best practices for cultural heritage institutions interested in converting analog audio recordings to digital formats.

The Digital Cultural Content Forum was established in 2001 to foster international information exchange among agencies engaged in the digitization and delivery of the global digital cultural heritage. Its objectives include fostering relationships, developing shared knowledge and undertaking activities to promote creativity, innovation and excellence in the digital cultural content sector.(Description taken from the website)

The Currency Museum of the Bank of Canada manages and displays portions of the National Currency Collection. In 2001, the Museum decided to digitize the collection to facilitate auditing and collection management, and work began in earnest in 2002. There are approximately 100,000 artifacts in the collection. We had two concerns about the digitization process. One involved the entries in our database, which included small versions of images, and the other was the large versions of the images themselves. This case study only addresses the images.

This resource began as a working tool to improve digitization standards at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. As such, it uses actual examples taken from the museum collections. Other museums can use this document as a resource to build their own digitization standards—or to build reliable procedures on related topics. It can also be used as a quality-control tool for museums that wish to monitor the work of external digital suppliers, thereby helping to improve the quality of deliverables. This is not a detailed tool, nor is it final. It is a collection of basic guidelines that will change and evolve over time, as technology and knowledge develop.

This guide outlines basic steps required to digitize the cultural practices of our communities. It provides detailed steps for using Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) technology that is typically available to small and medium-sized museums, including the digitization of new and existing audio recordings, new and existing video, and the scanning of existing photographs, and ephemera. The guide also includes a case study, outlining the results produced by Memorial University's Digital Archive Initiative (DAI). This resource was produced for the Canadian Heritage Information Network by the Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador in cooperation with Memorial University.

A collaborative effort by federal agencies formed as a group in 2007 to define common guidelines, methods, and practices for digitizing historical content. (Description taken from the website)

This guidebook provides advice on standards and best practices to organisations involved in the development of cultural heritage Web services. The content of the guidebook is based on the advice provided by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF)-digitise Technical Advisory Service (and others) to projects funded by the NOF-digitise programme. (Description taken from the website)

This document is a result of the Minerva project's good practice working group. It presents a practical handbook to the establishment, execution and management of digitisation projects, with particular focus on the cultural area (libraries, museums, archives). (Description taken from the website)

These Guidelines for image metadata are produced by the Metadata Working Group, an alliance of digital camera manufacturers.

MPEG-21 is a multimedia framework, developed by the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG), is designed to "enable transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices used by different communities" It has a similar function to METS, in that it provides a framework for structuring sets of metadata and files representing complex digital resources (in particular, audio and video files). MPEG-21 includes a Rights Expression Language and a structure for a data dictionary. It allows the integration of the processes required to generate, manipulate, use, manage, and deliver multimedia files. MPEG-21 includes elements to support identification and description of digital resources, handling and usage of content, intellectual property management and protection, etc. It is intended to be machine-actionable (able to be used with hardware and software that will enforce licence provisions).

JPEG 2000 is a standard for digital images, developed by the Joint Photographic Expert Group. It is a new version of the original JPEG image standard.

MPEG-7 is a standard for describing features of audio and video content "so that users can search, browse, and retrieve that content more efficiently and effectively". It combines content metadata (title, creator, rights, information about people, objects, and events represented in the multimedia file, etc.) as well as technical metadata about the file. MPEG-7 is an ISO standard developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group).

This standard defines a set of metadata elements for digital images to enable users to "develop, exchange, and interpret digital image files. The dictionary has been designed to facilitate interoperability between systems, services, and software as well as to support the long-term management of and continuing access to digital image collections." Metadata for intellectual property and rights management is not included. This standard was written with large-scale digital repositories in mind, but is still useful for smaller repositories.

The Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) is a professional international organization dedicated to keeping members and others apprised of the latest scientific and technological developments in the field of imaging through conferences, educational programs, publications, and its website. (Description taken from the website)

Many online resources offer digitization best practices and standards, but few show how to use equipment and software according to those standards. This guide, produced by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), offers technical information for scanning reflective flat objects such as documents, newsprint and photographic prints. It will help you understand and select hardware and software. Using widely accessible software, it offers step-by-step examples to prepare equipment, test scan quality and scan objects. The gallery, library and archive communities may find the information useful, though sections such as those on cataloguing, metadata and archiving were written with museums in mind.

This guide, produced by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), offers technical information for scanning small transparencies such as photographic film and negatives. It is a supplement to our guide How to Scan Reflective Objects Using a Flatbed Scanner, which should be reviewed first. This guide focuses on the selection and use of transparency scanning equipment. It offers step-by-step examples using widely accessible software to prepare scanning equipment, test scan quality, scan transparent objects and edit results.

This tool, developed by the Canadian Heritage Information Network and Parks Canada, is designed to help you determine the necessary storage space for archival and production master files. Archival master files are the original unedited files produced as a result of your scans or photographs; production master files are the cleaned-up versions of your archival masters. The tool can be downloaded and modified as you wish.

This guide, produced by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), is primarily intended for Canadian museum professionals but may be valuable to anyone wishing to undertake a process of digitizing cultural heritage audio. It provides hands-on examples of how to convert analogue electronic audio to a digital format by using budget-conscious equipment and software in a Windows PC operating environment.