Hi Perian,
A lot of the responses you've received so far have advised you to go for higher
resolution. I belief that this advice may make sense in certain circumstances
(for example, original art, fragile materials or small high-value collections),
but the situation you're describing is different ("the documents aren't
"precious"). I'd encourage you to weigh the intended use of the material in
making your decision. The advice you received was accurate if your main goal is
preservation, but that's not what your post led me to believe. If your main
goal is increased access to as many items in your collection as fast as
possible, I think a different approach may be more suitable.
For those of you who will be surprised to hear me say this... Sam Quigley gave
an inspiring talk at an SAA preconference RLG Programs organized in Chicago
'07, during which he began to question the time-honored advice of "do it once
for all time," and argued that a model of rapid digitization for access may be
just as valid to make museum collections available as quickly as possible. It
made me (and some of my colleagues) refine our positions when it comes to
digitization. Since I don't want to put words in Sam's mouth any more than I've
already done (I suspect he's reading this!), you can listen to his talk at
http://www.oclc.org/programs/events/2007-08-29.htm.
Some of my colleagues who were involved in organizing this event put together a
provocative essay called "Shifting Gears," summarizing some of the
forward-looking ideas discussed during the event Sam spoke at - the end result
is very much aimed at the archival community, but worth considering in this
context as well. You'll find it at
http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2007-02.pdf. Here's a
pertinent excerpt:
"Many of our digital initiatives have stressed the importance of preservation,
leaving access as an afterthought (the idea being if you capture
preservation-quality; you can always derive an access copy). In reality, due to
the very special nature of these often unique materials, we will always
preserve the originals to the best of our ability. In light of recent programs
for the mass digitization of books, if special collections and their funding
continue to be marginalized, our administrations may not keep us around to
attend to the originals.
In the past, we've soothed our doubts by repeating the mantra, "we'll only get
one chance to do it, so it's got to be done right." Experience has shown that
that is not in fact the case. Often we do go back when the technology improves
or when we better understand our users' needs. We need to put on our helmets
now and go for the biggest bang for the buck in terms of access."
Cheers,
G?nter
***
G?nter Waibel
RLG Programs, OCLC
voice: +1-650-287-2144
G?nter blogs at ... http://www.hangingtogether.org
-----Original Message-----
From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of
Perian Sully
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 8:24 AM
To: Museum Computer Network Listserv
Subject: [MCN-L] Archive materials - image sizes?
Hi all:
We're currently having a debate about the appropriate scanned image
sizes for archival documents. Our scanner doesn't scan into RAW, so
we're batting back and forth whether to save the master TIFFs as 600 or
300 dpi.
On the 300 side:
1) many of our archival materials were already scanned at 300 dpi (that
being the original size I designated, but we've a long way to go yet)
2) the majority of our reproduction requests are for 300 dpi JPG
3) storage space concerns
4) archive materials are mostly documents and don't necessarily need 600
dpi treatment
5) since the documents aren't "precious" like the 3D materials and
photographs, we can go back and rescan if we really need a 600 dpi JPG
(ie. handling concerns aren't as great)
On the 600 side:
1) scan once and be done with it
2) we do sometimes receive 600 dpi JPG requests
3) storage is cheap
4) make sure the master TIFF is as high as quality as possible, since we
don't have RAW to fall back upon
We're also thinking about scanning the documents at 300 dpi, and
photographs and 3D materials in 600.
What do other institutions do? Any best practices we should fall back
upon here?
Thanks in advance!
Perian Sully
Collection Information and New Media Coordinator
Judah L. Magnes Museum
2911 Russell St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-549-6950 x 335
http://www.magnes.org
Contributor, http://www.musematic.org
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