I agree with Ari. As an image which will only be used as a visual guide to the object, you don't need to make a really great photograph. But if you're planning on sharing images with researchers or putting them on the web, it may be more time/cost effective to photograph them at high enough resolutions that they can be read and studied in detail, instead of using the real objects.
Many of our objects at the Magnes aren't terribly valuable or pretty, but everything is photographed fairly high enough resolution. Since we are constantly sending out images with lots of text to researchers, this has proved invaluable, since the researchers need to be able to read the works. But that's just us. Perian Sully Collection Information and New Media Coordinator Judah L. Magnes Museum -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ari Davidow Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 6:55 AM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Digital Image of Collection Object You don't =have= to do anything (and shouldn't do anything that doesn't meet your needs) in specific. The sine qua non is probably that you want to ensure that you are presenting images that your audience can see on the web; there is a lot of discussion about whether or not you should gather higher resolution images at the same time as yo are doing web-utile versions (I believe yes, but there are reasons to argue otherwise). But how you provide access, and to what you provide access, is entirely dependent on your means and your actual audience needs. ari On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Adele HOARAU <adele.hoarau at cr-reunion.fr> wrote: > Hello all, > I work in a new project of cultural museum. I'm in charge of the database. > I was wondering if we had to take high resolution images of all the > objects of our collection or only select some of them that are really > important and let the others in low resolution, in order to create a > searchable database. It's rather a question of use of the database : does > it have to render an image that would be as faithful as possible (in case > the object disappear ?) or is the image rather a supplementary indication, > next to other metadata. > For the moment we don't have many objects, and we should not have many > because our people's story is recent. > Many thanks, > Ad?le Geoffroy > Maison des Civilisations et de l'Unit? R?unionnaise > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
