Speaking from the archives world, the trend
toward putting out "more product" with "less
process"(Greene and Meissner) in archival
processing is also being seen in digitization
efforts. This is a desire to move away from
costly digitization (and descriptive) practices
toward more efficient and cost-effective methods
to get more of our collections out to users in digital form.
As G?nter aptly points out, this is make sense in
certain circumstances, especially in archives
which are often massive, where microfilm is still
*the* preservation format, and we have every
intention of preserving the originals. If these
documents don't have significant artifactual
value, I'd suggest to Perian to consider
microfilming and scanning the film vs. the
originals. The cost can be as little as $0.30 per image.
We're hearing more and more about gearing up our
digitization efforts and, with 10-15 years of
digitization practice under our belts, perhaps it
is time to review our practices and standards,
and begin to revisit the high bar we've set for
ourselves, a bar that may be limiting us in
serving one of our key missions: access.
Mary W. Elings
Archivist for Digital Collections
The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
Adjunct Faculty
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
MCN Standards SIG Chair
At 01:40 PM 1/8/2008, Nik Honeysett wrote:
>Bravo to Sam (the man with the longest title in
>Museum Technology) for questioning time honored
>advice. (Hmm... Time honored?). There are other
>areas where this thinking is being applied very
>productively, for example in software and
>website development. I know this topic has come
>up before, but I'm concerned by the "do it once,
>burn to DVD, never have to do it again"
>philosophy. Life expectancy for this media is
>not in the "never" range. If you are on a
>digitization initiative and buying large
>quantities of low quality media you should be
>wary of the life expectancy of your archive. You
>may _have_ to rescan or at least transfer to
>different media stock. In that regard a more
>appropriate resolution based on your
>institution's short- to mid- term needs (5-10
>years?) may be appropriate. Storage is cheap,
>but this compounds the problem. Bigger, faster,
>cheaper means that you put more of your digital
>eggs in one media basket. If one out of 10 DVDs
>fail, you loose 100 tiffs, if one out 10 HD-DVDs
>fail, you loose 1,000 tiffs. -nik >>>
>"Waibel,Guenter" <waibelg at oclc.org> 1/8/2008
>9:37 AM >>> 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-bounces at 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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