Griffin Museum of Photography Digitizing Archives

Griffin Museum of Photography Digitizing Archives

Today, many libraries and museums across the world are putting services and activities online for better management and to facilitate public access. Digital preservation efforts have been stepped up since 2000 in academic libraries, museums, state library administrative agencies, and public libraries.

In a first of its kind venture, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA will soon have its archives completely digitized, says a recent report. A nonprofit organization dedicated solely to the art of photography, the museum is a treasure trove of exhibits of well­known photographers to new entrants on the scene that explore important themes and thought­provoking ideas. The image scanning and archiving project is being carried out in collaboration with the Boston Public Library, the second publicly supported municipal library in the United States.

The museum archives consist of 80,000 of museum founder Arthur Griffin’s prints kept in manila folders and trying to locate any specific image had become a time consuming process. With support from the team at Boston Public Library, the museum had completed scanning 5000 photographs at the time of this report, and has begun on the next set. Advanced digital imaging technology is being used to create digital surrogates of the museum’s exhibits.

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Creating and Managing a Digital Image Archive for Museums

Data Capture and Creation: ­ Museum collections include photographs, manuscripts, printed texts, artwork, and many more. Advanced technologies and tools such as flatbed scanners, digital cameras, and planetary cameras are used for the digitization of cultural heritage materials. The technology and the device chosen will depend on the physical structure of the original analog material.

Once the images are digitized, they should be combined with the associated text or metadata (text that describes the image) and stored or archived for easy access and retrieval. Digitization of museum collections includes key activities such as: •

Image Handling and Preparation

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Image Capture

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File Formats and Compression

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Data Protection

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Metadata: Image Description, Indexing and Cataloging

For the Griffin Museum, creating metadata was difficult as many of the images have little or no information written on them.

Data Access and Delivery: Digitization can make fragile and heavy monuments/ artifacts freely available and accessible to the public. The authorities should plan and implement a mechanism for efficient delivery of archival materials and

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images. This would involve implementing search and retrieval facilities and addressing user issues and access management.

Managing the Digital Collection: Digitized documents have to be indexed and tagged with indicators for increased accessibility. Key activities involved in this stage are: •

Database creation and system design

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Workflow and procedures management

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Quality assurance

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Project management

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Digital preservation and storage

Boston Public Library began its digitization efforts in 2005 and has also been digitally copying materials from other libraries since 2010. The Griffin Museum has become the first museum to participate in the digitization move with Boston Public Library. The Griffen Museum’s archived images will now be available to the public and as well as for legal and licensed uses. It is also expected that the archives will become a source of revenue for the museum and that the museum will become one source for photography in New England.

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