Just Digitise It - Daniel Wilksch of the Public Records Office Victoria

31 October 2017
Just Digitise It
Community Heritage Grants Program digitisation workshop

Session outline
1.35 Arrival and welcome
1.40 - 2.40 pm Planning a digitisation project
• Setting standards
• Resources needed
• Care of your originals
• Care of your copies
2.40 - 3.00 pm Digitisation facility tour
Wan Wong, NLA
3.00 - 3.20 pm Afternoon tea
3.30 - 4.00 pm Negotiating rights before you digitise
Michael Proud, NLA
4.00 – 4.30 pm Providing access
• Getting images online
• Metadata and sharing images
4.30 - 5.00 pm Q & A

Further notes and resources online
Museums and Galleries NSW fact sheets
https://mgnsw.org.au/sector/resources/online-resources/
Just Digitise It (video demo, but quite old now)
http://prov.vic.gov.au/community/managing-your-collection/just-
digitise-it
Digital Access to Collections
http://www.digitalcollections.org.au/
Museums Australia (Victoria) training videos
https://mavic.asn.au/training-videos
Australian Libraries Copyright Council
http://libcopyright.org.au/content/resources

Matching standards to the project
Setting standards
Two main impetus…es for digitisation
• Preservation
– OHIO (only handle it once)
– colour management, ‘master’ copies
• Access
– search/ discoverability
– crowdsourcing

Factors
Setting standards
• How much material to copy?
• What condition? (preservation needs assesment)
• How much time/ money do you have?
• Has somebody already digitised it? (books…)
• What is its significance? (significance statement, etc.)

How do we see?
Setting standards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision

Describing light with numbers
Smooth gradient
Broken into 16 steps (4-bit)
No intensity
(0 in 8-bit scale)
Step 10 of 16
(160 in 8-bit
scale)
Step 16
(255 in 8-bit
scale)
Hint: the smooth gradient is in 8-bit steps – each level of intensity is 2 px wide in
the original drawing.

Bit-depth
Red 255 ff 1111 1111
Green 255 ff 1111 1111
Blue 255 ff 1111 1111
24 BInary digiTs

What is a digital image?
Setting standards
4d4d 002a 0000 ea68 ffff ff00 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
.... Black pixels (0's) left out ....
0000 0000 00ff ffff 000e 0100 0003 0000
0001 0064 0000 0101 0003 0000 0001 00c8
0000 0102 0003 0000 0003 0000 eb16 0103
0003 0000 0001 0001 0000 0106 0003 0000
0001 0002 0000 0111 0004 0000 0001 0000
0008 0112 0003 0000 0001 0001 0000 0115
0003 0000 0001 0003 0000 0116 0003 0000
0001 00c8 0000 0117 0004 0000 0001 0000
ea60 0118 0003 0000 0003 0000 eb1c 0119
0003 0000 0003 0000 eb22 011c 0003 0000
0001 0001 0000 0153 0003 0000 0003 0000
eb28 0000 0000 0008 0008 0008 0000 0000
0000 00ff 00ff 00ff 0001 0001 0001
from http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/dataformats/tiff/
ffffff = 255,255,255
( r g b )
in hexadecimal notation

Resolution
Setting standards
1 inch 1 inch
1 inch 1 inch
@300dpi
= 90,000 pixels
@72dpi
= 5,184 pixels
‘Screen’ resolution Standard ‘Print’ resolution

How many dpi is enough?
Original 75 x 53 mm (VPRS 8609/P30 unit 3, item 6/108)
600 dpi

4800 dpi. Could back off a little…

Colour management
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_space
sRGB (monitor standard)
CIE Chart with sRGB gamut by spigget - own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Adobe RGB (1998)

Compression
Setting standards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG
83,261 bytes 1,523 bytes

Image generations
Cute kitten (modified) courtesy:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/foundan
imalsfoundation/8469463762/
Original scene Photographic Negative Print
Digital ‘masters’
Modified
copy

The most colours vs. the right colours
-- ‘positive’ images: scan for colour fidelity
-- negatives: scan for maximum tonal range
(consider 16/48-bit)
It’s better to make a good scan than correct a
‘poor’ one. ‘Levels’ adjustment when scanning is
different to adjusting an existing digital image.
Fidelity

Still image standards
Setting standards
National Library of Australia
http://www.nla.gov.au/standards/image-capture
Public Record Office Victoria
http://prov.vic.gov.au/government/standards-and-policy/capture

Photographing objects
Setting standards
Museums Australia (Victoria)
http://www.mavic.asn.au/resources/practical-training

Sound and moving pictures (advice)
Setting standards
National Film and Sound Archives
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/care/caring-for-film/
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/care/caring-for-audio/
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/services/

Physical resources
Resources needed
• Space
– managed, secure (fire, flood, pests, ancient wiring, not about to be reclaimed by Council for
boutique carparks, etc.)
– flat (shelving, tables)
• Supplies
– rehousing materials for copied originals
– acid free paper, plastic film, gloves, pencils, spirit level, measuring tape/ rulers, gaffer
tape, extension cables, USB sticks, random things that aren’t too grubby

Physical resources
Resources needed
• Toys!
– Scanning equipment
– Colour calibration equipment
– Workstations
– Storage

Human resources
Resources needed
• Project manager
• Project committee
(for when the manager heads off to Noosa)
• Tame experts
• Volunteers
– what do you need from them?
– what do they get out of it?

Documentation
Resources needed
• Digitisation policy/ strategy/ plan
• Project statement/ plan
• Risk management framework
• Specific policies/ procedures
• Written agreements with donors and digitisers
• Passwords. Write them down.

Permission
Resources needed
• From your group
• From your stakeholders
• From your donors/ owners of the material
• From your funders

Collection management
Care of your originals
• Are the items catalogued? (Does the catalogue make sense?)
• Are they securely stored?
• Do you know who owns what?
… things go missing.

Preservation management
• put it in a box (controls light, humidity, physical safety)
• wrapped in plastic (anything except PVC)
• write on the enclosure, not the object
• only take it out when you have to
… things get old.

Relationship management
• have some handling rules (gloves, induction)
• digitisation providers should be able to describe their
security and preservation measures
• don’t break the original to digitise it
… things get dropped.

Further further reading
National Standards for Museums and Galleries
• http://www.collectionsaustralia.net/sector_info_item/107
Keeping Archives

Hardware failure
Care of your copies
• backups, offsite preferably
• understand the limits of the storage technology
• checksums – or just look at your images every so often

Hardware obsolescence
Care of your copies
• migration, vary your storage options
• active management of collection

Software obsolescence
Care of your copies
• open formats
(image formats have been stable for decades)
• open applications
(separate the data from the program)
• plan for and budget migrations

Poor management and documentation
Care of your copies
• Bill is your IT guy. He has
just fallen under a bus.
• Try not to implement
systems you don’t
understand.

Hardware failure
Digital Preservation
• backups, offsite preferably
• understand the limits of the storage technology
• checksums – or just look at your images every so often

Summary
Metadata
• All of your data needs to be easily extractable from the software it’s in.
• Create a simple file structure and make sure people stick to it.
• Manage your backups properly (no lending to people, manage your risks, NO shortcuts).

Originals and renditions
Getting images online
• xyz

Originals and renditions
Constraints on delivering raw images
• Connection speed and bandwidth
• Screen size and resolution
• Control over rights to the image

Options for publishing
• Don’t publish at all…
• Use existing commercial tools and services (Flickr, Facebook, eHive)
• Use existing community services (Victorian Collections)
• Your own site (Wordpress, Omeka)

What and why to put online
• Marketing your organisation (‘going viral’)
• Online archive (TROVE)
• Storytelling
• Online communities

Examples
Flickr: https://flickr.com
Trove: http://trove.nla.gov.au
Museum Applied Arts and Sciences (Sydney):
https://collection.maas.museum/object/96257

Definition
Metadata
• Data about data (and data systems)
• Metadata shares and translates between
– collections and users
– collections and collections.

Possible stages in metadata usage
• in-house catalogue of collection
• standardisation of data captured
card catalogue --> small museums cataloguing standard
• computerisation of data
card catalogue --> InMagic database
• web publishing of data
InMagic database --> CIDOC RDF in JSON via RESTful interface (http://data.culturehack.org.uk/dataset/37251018-British-Museum-object-catalog)

Kinds of metadata
Descriptive metadata
•Dublin Core (http://dublincore.org/)
•Victorian Collections (https://victoriancollections.net.au/api)
Structural metadata
•METS (http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/)
Preservation metadata
•VERS (https://www.prov.vic.gov.au/recordkeeping-government/about-standards-framework-policies/vers-standard/vers-version-3)

Common metadata formats
• CSV (comma separated values)
• XML
• JSON
RDF (resource description framework) is a set of standards and formats and vocabularies that aims to encompass everything talked about.

Metadata
• Think about how your existing data can be:
• Categorised into different functions (descriptive, discovery, preservation, etc.)
• Standardised (eg. Dublin Core) enabling matches with other collections and websites.

Metadata
• How does what you are recording 'translate' across systems?
– Identity (title, ‘control symbol’)
– Classification (subject, function)
– History (dates, purposes)
– [Description]
– Relationships

Identity
Metadata
• Some items may not have titles. What is the thing that distinguishes one item from the next in a collection?
• Remember physical cues not same as digital. Perhaps the filename of your image is the title?
• ‘Control Symbol’: Catalogue / collection / record-keeping number.

Classification
Metadata
• Information to manage items and help narrow down searches.
• Library: ‘subject’ – what is it about?
• Archive: ‘function’ – what does it do?
• Internet: ‘tagging’ – where did I put it again?
• Subject/ topic list for images: http://www.picturethesaurus.gov.au/

History
Metadata
• Archive/ Museum: ‘provenance’ – where is it from? (which collection, which donor)
• Management history: what has happened to it? ie., what date was it scanned?
• Scanning is another layer to existing management history that might be recorded in your collection database.

Description
Metadata
• Extended stories about item (mum on a bike)
• Description of physical original – dimensions, special features
• Description of digital copy – dpi, file format

Relationships
• This object is part of this collection
• This book was owned by this person between these dates
The Resource Description Framework expresses all metadata in terms of relationships
subject -> predicate -> object

Modern web applications
• Every URL is a reference to a resource
(book, photo, object, etc.)
• Information about that resource is attached to that URL in human-readable (web page) or
machine-readable (Dublin Core, Resource Description Framework, etc.) form

Contributing to Trove
An example of how to share metadata.
•Harvesting tools built in to commonly used applications:
http://help.nla.gov.au/trove/becoming-partner/for-smaller-collections
•Metadata embedded on pages (Sitemap method):
http://help.nla.gov.au/trove/html-record

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