Digitization systems and procedures in photographic image archives

From Mr. David Iglésias Frank, archival technician at CRDI, Girona City Council 

The Centre de Recerca i Difusió de la Imatge (CRDI) of the Girona City Council organized in 22-23 May 2012 a 14 hours workshop about digitisation in the framework of the EuropeanaPhotography project.

prof. Carles Mitjà, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

during the workshop

The workshop Digitization systems and procedures in photographic image archives aimed to provide an overview of the available systems for original photographic materials digitization as well as the procedures in order to obtain the best results in terms of image quality and fidelity to the original.

The teachers for this workshop were Carles Mitjà and Bea Martinez, very renowned professionals in Spain. Both are from the Image Quality Laboratory (IQL) by the Centre de la Imatge i la Tecnologia Multimèdia (CITM) located at Terrassa Campus of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

Joan Boadas, the CRDI Director

As a result of this workshop, a recommendation paper will be published at the Europeanan Photography website. The goal of this short paper is to establish the main recommendations for partners of the project involved in the process of digitizing. These recommendations come from the explanations that the teachers made during the workshop. They can not be understood as a theoretical corpus, but a procedure in how to work.

The EuropeanaPhotography project aims to digitize and disseminate 500.000 images representing the first hundred years of Photography, from the first pictures of Fox Talbot and Daguerre to just before the beginning of World War 2. The project is participated by institutions from different European countries. In this context, the CRDI has the responsibility to provide standards for digitization and cataloging.

The workshop was attended by 22 people representing 13 partners that are part of the EuropeanaPhotography project, from Italy, England, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia,  and Lithuania.