The Publications Office of the EU is managing a digital preservation service on behalf of the EU institutions. Its vision and strategy on this service are described in a Digital Preservation Plan. This plan also details the processes, methodologies and tools applied, and documents the scope of the repository. This short paper describes the establishment of a trustworthy digital preservation service and will showcase some challenges faced and issues remaining to be solved.
It is crucial for both the research community and the public that AV materials are archived in a FAIR manner. This paper is about AV materials contained in DANS's EASY repository, and their depositing and archiving according to the FAIR principles. Using an Oral History collection in EASY as use case,, it is explored to what extent the FAIR principles are followed and where their implementation is challenging. Moreover, tools currently developed to help assess the FAIRness of datasets before or after deposition are introduced.
Since its publication in 2012, the Metamorfoze guidelines are used and adopted worldwide by the cultural heritage community and by camera & scanner manufactures. In 2017, ISO/TS 19264-1 is published. This ISO technical specification is based on the unification of the Metamorfoze and FADGI guidelines and on new technical insights. ISO/TS 19264-1 provides universally agreed upon terms, units and methodology for cultural heritage imaging. Version 2.0 of the Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging Guidelines is under construction now. And a draft version is published.
The terms digitization and digitalization have often been used interchangeably, confounded, and misunderstood [1]. Case studies on archives digitization, which can be understood to be the transformation of analog resources to digital formats, are plentiful, but there appears to be less discussion of digitization as but one aspect of the digitalization of archives, here meant to include the broader digital transformation of business models and services. The example of the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives project can be used to examine how comprehensive digitalization, including digitization alongside traditional analog concerns, have shaped the definition of project workflows and operations within the more limited sphere of its digitization operations.
The complexity of the digitisation process in a decentralised environment requires profound workflow and risk management, with attention for solid communication and for QA across the digitisation chain. In the absence of an all-in solution, ongoing projects at KU Leuven Libraries have served as a virtual lab environment to gradually create and test specific tools and standardise workflows since 2009. The resulting set of step-specific QA tools and processes form an integral part of a standardised yet modular digitisation workflow. The modular setup provides flexibility when developing project-specific workflows. Detailed tracking of the complete digitisation process for each individual project through a workflow management system allows for shared communication as well as for overall high-level risk management and multi-faceted QA in a time-efficient manner.
In early 2018, the Menil Collection received financial support via a generous grant from the Houston Endowment to spearhead a new digitization initiative. Through tactical crossdepartmental collaboration, the Menil has been able to strengthen institution-wide support for imaging. This initiative has allowed us to hire and train staff members, equip an industry-standard photography studio, and develop institutionwide workflows that support the long-term values in our commitment to taking extraordinary care for works of art and the central role of research and scholarship in the collection. Managed by Digital Asset Manager Margaret McKee and technically managed by Conservation Imaging Specialist Adam Neese, this project has resulted in over 1,500 objects being digitized to date with additional images of every object being captured for condition documentation and scholarly research. This paper outlines workflows established for collaborative capture at the Menil and discusses case studies in which the workflows have been utilized.
Stories of mass digitization projects and the preservation of those physical materials to be digitized often bring to mind well-equipped set ups in clean dust-free, air controlled rooms with highly skilled staff. One particularly thinks of this for museums and archives located in temperate-climate developed countries. But what about stories of digitization projects with limited resources in less than optimum environments, how does one envision those? The Archives of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) [1] is the largest and most complete record of Khmer Rouge actions during the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime. [2] The Archives contain forced "confessions", many extracted under torture; biographies of prisoners, guards and officials; photographs; original negatives; and other paper-based bound materials. Many items are very fragile and were not created with long-term preservation in mind so when handled for research they are at risk. The first Archive team did not record the provenance of the documents so research and recreating history is a challenge. In addition these records are not easily accessible for most Cambodians. For these reasons, and because the climate in Phnom Penh is hot and humid preservation is much harder than in more temperate climates, UNESCO and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) have provided funds to digitize the Museum's archives. With these funds and under direction from UNESCO experts, along with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts (MoCFA), Digital Divide Data and Brechin Imaging are collaborating to preserve and digitize the Archives and to train the Tuol Sleng staff in digitization and preservation. Once ingested into the Project's database and crowdsourcing website, which is currently being developed, these records will help illuminate the stories of people caught in this dark period of Cambodian history for the next generations.
In this paper, we present a set of methodologies for Digital Cinema projector calibration, quality verification and evaluation by application of the international visual test SMPTE Digital Projection Verifier (DProve) as well as related SMPTE and ISO standards. We demonstrate modified SMPTE guidelines for faster, simpler and more precise measurements in practical conditions and introduce several tools for illustrative quality evaluation. The measurement interpretation is based on both, absolute tolerances defined by the SMPTE standards, as well as relative assessment calculated by the CIEDE2000 color difference formula. The latter approach is intended to better understand the importance of the color and tonality error for viewer's perception in the specific cinema low light levels. On the examples of selected D-Cinema projector and display measurements, we introduce possible strengths and weaknesses of various projection technologies, used in Czech and Slovak commercial cinema or review rooms, which differs by the specific manufacturer's technology or type of light source.
The Norwegian National Museum and Piql have collaborated on preserving some of the most valuable art history Norway has to offer. The project is the start of a global initiative aiming to protect some of the most valuable cultural heritage the world has to offer in a digital format. Safely secured on an Arctic island, the Arctic World Archive safeguards a copy of irreplaceable documents, drawings, sound pieces, pictures and movies, even databases or other types for format with significant heritage value.
Faced with the possibility of running out of storage space and losing important born-digital cultural heritage artifacts, we are embarking on a project to design a process for preserving objects generated by our virtual world-based group so that these issues will not become critical in the future. Because of the highturnover nature of student-based groups, preservation of objects associated with annual and learning events is essential for continuity in the community. We present our blueprint for preserving these artifacts using a combination of an established archiving system together with a customized metadata schema that reflects the specific needs of VCARA and an easy to use interface for browsing collections.