Digital master preservation through digital image archiving

The preservation of cultural and scientific content is essential for today’s museums and libraries. It is not a matter of ROI—what matters is the preservation of cultural heritage for generations to come, the accessibility of the culture to its people, and the image of your institution.

Here are some facts:

1. Images on film and photo papers are impermanent—they do not last even as long as a single lifetime before suffering substantial degradation.
2. Even the best storage methods cannot prevent fading and color shifting of film images and photographic prints.
3. Improper storage and exposure to UV light expedites the degradation process.
4. Accessing images in an analog collection is slow, difficult, and damaging to the originals.

To date, no universally accepted standards are in place for digital archiving. But studies indicate that the higher the file quality—especially in terms of image resolution and color depth—the greater the file’s potential for successful use with future technologies. By using a standard process and format—such as the KODAK Digital Transparency Workflow—you can create digital masters of your original images, archive the masters, and use them to create subsequent surrogate images.

Many museums and institutions today, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, United States), the National Maritime Museum (London, England), the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC, United States), and Fratelli Alinari (Florence, Italy), are archiving their critical content using high-resolution KODAK Scanners. KODAK Scanners can digitally record film originals, prints, and even glass photograph plates at a consistently high optical resolution of up to 5,600 dpi—regardless of the original size—with exceptional image depth at 16 bits per color. The KODAK Digital Transparency Workflow digitizes image archives with future repurposing in mind.

Learn more about how museums are using KODAK Scanners. For more information on scanning for archiving, please e-mail us.