Image creation and digitization strategies

Abstract

The two digitization projects under consideration in this article, ‘The Visual Evidence: The Photographic Presentation of Landscape and People’ led by the University of St Andrews and ‘The Drawn Evidence: Scotland's Development through its Architectural History from Industrialization to the Millennium, 1780–2000’ led by the University of Dundee, are funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) of the joint Higher Education Funding Councils of Great Britain, a programme aimed specifically at increasing access to research resources for the academic community. Although the projects are independently managed, they collaborate in areas such as funding, resources, expertise and evaluation. Scheduled for completion by October 2001 and August 2002 respectively, the projects are producing fully indexed, searchable web-based digital resources. While aimed primarily at the academic community, in a wide range of disciplines, they will nonetheless be of interest to many other user sectors.

This article aims to assess the research potential of the project outcomes; to examine preservation issues relating to the original media; to describe the project methodologies, aims and objectives; and, finally, to offer comment on some of the technical issues surrounding the large- scale production and dissemination of photographic and large-format images.

Keywords:

• image creation
• digitization