A presentation on meemoo's glass plate digitisation project, in which ca. 170.000 glass plates from ca. 30 Flemish cultural heritage managing institutions will be digitised in 2022-2023. As presented at the B-Magic conference in the Antwerp FotoMuseum on 6 May 2022.

1. meemoo - GIVE-glass plate digitisation
Brecht Declercq - B-MAGIC Conference - 06.05.2022
Speelgoedmuseum - Mechelen

2. Agenda
Speelgoedmuseum
1. GIVE & glass plate digitisation
2. First phases: a review
1. Material preparation
2. Digitisation
3. Archiving and access
challenges & benefits
of a unique, collaborative
centrally coordinated
approach

3. GIVE glass plates
scope and timing
AMSAB - Gent
1.

4. 1 - What is GIVE?
● Coordinated Initiative for Flemish Heritage Digitisation
(Gecoördineerd Initiatief voor Vlaamse Erfgoeddigitalisering)
● GIVE is part of the recovery plan ‘Vlaamse Veerkracht’ and is realised
with the support of the European Regional Development Fund.
● Within GIVE, meemoo focuses on 4 projects:
a. Paper digitisation (Primeur)
b. Glass plate digitisation (and extending ‘KnowYourCarrier.com’ for photos!)
c. Digitisation of Flemish Top Heritage
d. Metadata

5. ● A unique catch up movement
for high quality digitisation
and digital access
to Flemish heritage.
● A chance to share expertise
with the heritage sector
about the specific challenges of large-scale digitisation
and new technologies in the field
1 - What is GIVE?

6. 1 - Scope
● Digitise ca. 170.000 glass plates from ca. 30 content partners
○ Preparation: register and describe - pack - clean
○ Afterwards:
■ files sustainably archived by meemoo
■ made accessible (meemoo’s platforms and CP’s platforms if they wish)
→ Scope definition: what do we mean by glass plates?
• glass negatives
• glass positives (‘glass slides’), magic lantern slides
• not slides framed in glass
• not stained glass or other non-photographic glass objects

7. Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
Phase 5
2021 2022 2023
Project preparation
Tender
Material preparation
Digitisation
Archiving & giving access
1 - Timing

8. First phases:
a review
UA Bijzondere Collecties - Antwerp
2.

9. 2 - Phase 1: Project preparation
June 2021 - January 2022
• Confirmation of scope and content partners
• Extension of tooling and processes for registration and
packaging
• Planning of the logistical process
• Distribution of packaging materials (provided by meemoo)
• Hands-on manual for the registrators
• Research and documentation on digitisation
specs(together with a consultant)
→ Status = DONE

10. August 2021-June 2022
● Market research
● Tender
○ 1st publication: January 2022 (national publication)
○ Prices came out higher than expected
○ 2nd publication: March 2022 (European publication)
● Meemoo will publicly share all GIVE-tenders after awarding
(knowledge sharing!)
→ Status = ALMOST DONE
2 - Phase 2: Tendering

11. Material
preparation
MAS
Museum Plantin-Moretus - Antwerp
Stadsarchief - Mechelen
3.

12. 3 - Packaging and logistics
• Packaging
• Logistics metadata
• Carrier barcode
• Collection box
barcode
In Flanders Fields Museum - Ieper
In Flanders Fields Museum - Ieper

14. 3 - Technical characteristics
• Format version
• neg / pos, stereo pos / stereo neg, lantern plate
• Size:
• height and width in mm
• Preservation problems
• broken, cracked, emulsion release, scratches, dirt, mold, …
• Label present
• Color
• B/W, color, colored (tinting / toning)

15. Industriemuseum - Gent

16. 3 - Content description
• Title / content
• Collection: provenance
• Producer / photographer
• Place
• Age (EDTF date)
• exceptionally before digitisation!

17. Speelgoedmuseum - Mechelen

18. 3 - Challenges
• Differences in packaging, conservation, registration practice
→ meemoo offers different ways to deliver registration data
• Fragmented material-technical knowledge
→ meemoo organises workshops, provides extensive manual
• Workload: large volumes to be packed and registered
→ meemoo provides additional full time registrars

19. 3 - Benefits
• Strong advantages of scale
→ Packaging, barcodes, equipment, …
• Streamlining
→ Technical and descriptive metadata are standardised
• Sharing expertise
→ Workshops, manual, … all registration expertise is shared

20. Digitisation
MAS - Antwerpen
4.

21. 4 - Digitisation
June 2022 - September 2023
• 2 parallel digitisation lines
→ Ex situ & in situ (⅓ of scope; UGent & FOMU)
• Digitisation
1. Triage based on technicals characteristics
2. Dusting
3. Capturing
4. Post-processing
5. Quality control (by service provider & meemoo)

22. 4 - Digitisation
Glass plate as complex objects
• Raw archive master
→ Digital Negative (DNG)
• Edited mezzanine file
→ uncompressed Baseline TIFF 6.0
• Accessible file
• Editing esp. for glass negatives: over- & underexposure
• Metadata from registration & digitisation → METS XML
• Export of TIFF-embedded EXIF-metadata → METS XML

23. 4 - Challenges
• Differences in formats, preservation problems, technical
characteristics, …
→ meemoo centralises registration data to enable triage at
digitisation partner
• Fragile material → transport not always allowed
→ Parallel in situ & ex situ digitisation
• Workload: large volumes to be digitised in a short period
→ Large-scale logistic & material preparation

24. 4 - Benefits
• Strong advantages of scale
→ Beneficial, unrivaled pricing
• Streamlining
→ Technical specifications of digitisation & documentation
are standardised
• File formats fit for needs
→ Raw file for archiving & mezzanine for post-processing and
acces

25. Archiving & access
Speelgoedmuseum - Mechelen
5.

26. → sFTP
→ automatic & manual check
(file integrity, file format, anti-virus, …)
5 - Archiving & ingest
→ Media Asset Management System
(MAM)
→ meemoo’s platforms (IIIF-viewer)
→ Archief 2.0 (under development)

27. 5 - Challenges
• New kind of material for our archive system
→ New Submission Information Package (SIP) developed for this
purpose
• Smaller files
→ meemoo is used to handling large quantities, but also to far
larger files. E.g. the storage infrastructure for master files is LTO-
based, which is less suited for smaller files.
• Rebuild of our main access platform
→ Archief2.0 will have to be able to give a satisfying user
experience also for still images

28. 5 - Benefits
• Strong advantages of scale
→ Large scale storage infrastructure fully exploits Moore’s Law
• Central point of access for users
→ Archief2.0 will become the main central access point for
digitised Flemish glass plates
• Larger, more diverse, specifically targeted audiences
→ access tailored to the needs of specific target groups is
equally possible.

29. Conclusion
Exploiting the economies of
scale allows for …
a higher quality, e.g. in
project management
which in itself creates space
for higher quantities …
leading to new economies
of scale …
CIRCLE OF
QUALITY AND
QUANTITY

30. Any
questions?

31. Brecht Declercq
Manager Digitisation & Acquisition at meemoo
brecht.declercq@meemoo.be