Cultural heritage organizations of all types and sizes commonly maintain and preserve collections of 35mm mounted slides, oftentimes numbering in the hundreds, to thousands, to hundreds of thousands. Digitization of these objects presents multiple challenges. The mutual dualities of frontside/backside, combined with simultaneous reflective/transmissive content capture requires unusual imaging equipment and techniques to create efficient rapid capture workflows to meet current cultural heritage archival documentation requirements at scales such as these. Further, the interpretation, creation, and archiving of metadata from such captures present concomitant challenges, which may often be best met by integration into the imaging and processing workflow at the time of capture. Our research and development project created a suite of workflows and protocols for efficient and safe handling of slides as museum objects, complete data capture with current digital imaging studio equipment, and efficient post-processing of the digital image files.
Ben Sullivan, Walter Larrimore, "Digitizing and Managing 35mm Mounted Slides: The Flip Side" in Proc. IS&T Archiving 2018, 2018, pp 10 - 20, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2168-3204.2018.1.0.4