digitization from the ground up: digital imaging for historic new england's collections access...
DESCRIPTION
David Dwiggins, Information Technology Officer at Historic New England, discussed the evolution of the organization's digitization strategy. As part of its Collections Access Project, the Historic New England has placed images of more than 50,000 items from its collection online since 2010. Although original plans called for outsourcing almost all digitization, investments in equipment and training allowed the organization to produce archival quality, high-resolution images to supply its website, publication programs, and external users. The new direction has made the organization less dependent on grant funding for maintaining digitization activities, and has allowed it to develop internal expertise that reduces costs and increases efficiency. Dwiggins will discuss the challenges and opportunities the organization encountered as it built up its digital imaging capabilities from scratch. This presentation was part of "Digitizing Originals – From Best Practice to Archival Image," a panel discussion at the Visual Resources Association annual conference in Providence, Rhode Island, April 4, 2013. The session discussed best practices for photographing original material and creating archival images. Presenters also provided examples of established workflows for gathering, photographing, cataloging and archiving these materials.TRANSCRIPT
Digitization from the Ground Up
Digital Imaging for Historic New England’s Collections Access Project
VRA 2013, Providence, R.I.David M. Dwiggins, Information Technology [email protected]
We serve the public by preserving and presenting New England heritage.
Historic New England is a museum of cultural history that collects and preserves buildings, landscapes, and objects dating from the
seventeenth century to the present and uses them to keep history alive and to help people develop a deeper understanding and
enjoyment of New England life and appreciation for its preservation.
Historic New England’s mission
• Historic Properties• Collections• Preservation Services• Education• Library and Archives
5 program areas
Collections Access Project
• Multi-year, grant funded effort to enhance public availability of collections– New collections system– Large-scale digitization– New website
• Key goal: integration of museum, library, & archival collections
CAP grant on digitization
• “Historic New England will undertake the digitization of highlights in its library, archives and artifact collections, and link them to cataloguing records.”– 15,000 color slides– 2,500 4x5 color transparencies– 7,500 original historic photographs– 5,000 oversized archival objects
• “Projected costs for digitization are determined from actual per-image charges from trusted vendors currently engaged for Historic New England work.”
Image selection• Mix of archival and museum materials (no
book digitization)• Representative sample of collection• “low hanging fruit”
– Existing imagery– Homogenous groups of content
Existing Imagery
20,000+ existing digital images of collections identified before digitization even started (!!!)
Transparencies
• Around 2,700 transparencies scanned by outside vendor (in Boston)
Museum Object Prints
Glass Plate Transit Negatives• From microfilm to digital files (vendor in Boston)
Data Cleanup: Boston Transit Collection
The case for “do it yourself” photography
• Less movement of materials• Easier to deal with complex
collections– Reduced need for detailed
manifests, shipping, scheduling, etc.
• Meet day-to-day digitization needs• Build internal expertise– Creation of grant-funded
digital photographer position
In-house publication photography
Getting started with object photography
• Worked extensively with Michael Ulsaker of Ulsaker Studios– Studio planning– Installation– Training– Support
We used to do plenty of photography internally…
But had gotten out of the habit
First Harrison Gray Otis House, 1796
Technology in historic buildings, part I
Technology in historic buildings, part II
Equipment
• Canon EOS 5D Mark II Camera (21MP)• 50mm and 120mm lenses• Broncolor strobe system• Integrated light table• Polaroid MP4 column• Black cloth panel overhead to reduce
reflections• Apple iMac
– EOS Capture utility– Adobe Lightroom– Adobe Photoshop
Finished setup
In-situ digitization for museum objects
Still outsourced: Slides
• ~1,400+ slides of collection objects scanned by outside vendor (in India)
Ok, that worked… What about oversize materials?
Haverhill photo studio
Collections Storage in Haverhill
Goal: update photo studio for digital
• Shoot 5,000 oversized pieces internally• Allow reuse of equipment for other
digitization projects• Do it with money we had left (about $50k)– Started out trying to reuse equipment
from film days; only partly successful
Final Haverhill equipment
• Hasselblad H3D-39MP (demo)• 50mm and 120mm Hasselblad lenses• Canon EOS 5D Mark II (primarily 3D objects)• Used studio stand• Refurbish existing Norman strobe system• Custom vacuum table• Motorized copy column• Additional lighting
accessories, carts, etc.• Mac Pro workstation
• “Completed” Haverhill studio
Digital Asset Management - ResourceSpace
• Collections Management System provided inadequate management of digital images and derivatives
• Implemented ResourceSpace as experimental stopgap.– Open source DAMs– Web-based PHP/MySQL
• Rapidly adopted as institution-wide solution
• We are a now a contributing developer– S3Sync Plugin– DeepZoom Plugin
Workflow
• Depends somewhat on project
• Strategy: Get images into DAMs ASAP, then use assigned ResourceIDs for identification
• Take advantage of embedded metadata and basic file naming to simplify bulk ingest
• For archival materials, we generally save TIFF, primary DNG, and verso image– XXX.tif– XXX_DNG.dng– XXX_verso.tif
• Occasionally pre-generate metadata in RS and then manually attach images
Import of embedded metadata
DAM/collections management integration
ResourceSpace
Minisis
Recent/upcoming
• Implementation of new strobes and workstation in Haverhill studio for IMLS wallpaper grant
• Rollout of new image features on website– Multiple images per object– DeepZoom to expose high-resolution
imagery• Considering use of JPEG 2000 to reduce
storage footprint• Looking at ways to improve DAMs metadata
Digitization from the Ground Up
Digital Imaging for Historic New England’s Collections Access Project
VRA 2013, Providence, R.I.David M. Dwiggins, Information Technology [email protected]