Wouldn’t it be best to digitize the entire archive?
After surveying and repackaging the archive, you may decide to digitise some parts of it, with the aim of making the contents more readily available and easier to consult, and also to be able to store them in digital form. The quality and format will depend on the nature of use. For example, you need a higher quality for publication purposes than for online use.
Here are a few tips and tricks for a digitisation project:
- Ensure you have a good storage location (hard disk) and back-up.
- Document carefully what is being digitised. You may want to use your placement list or inventory for this.
- Think carefully about the file name of your digital reproduction.
Here are few tips for naming files:
- Use an underscore rather than spaces or other characters
- State the date first, in this format: 20190324 (yyyymmdd). For example, don’t write ‘John Smith’s photos’ and then the date, but rather 20190324_photos_JohnSmith.
Digitisation is an intensive process that requires a good plan. You will find more information about starting up a digitisation project on the TRACKS website.
Roland Van den Berghe’s artistic legacy
For the digitization phase within the pilot project, we went looking for various devices and a good scanner to digitize slides and negatives. Did you know that there is even an app available for this that you can use to get started?
(Dorothée van den Berghe)
Interested to read more? Go to the next topic: Oeuvre.