It is a sign of how pressing the issue of converting archive material into digital format has become that there is a British national award for digital preservation - and that last year it went to a guide on how to create and use digital materials.
The £5,000 Digital Preservation Award was awarded to PREMIS - the Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies working group. This team of 30 experts from five countries published a Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata and other tools to provide guidance for institutions that need to manage digital materials.
The issue of digitisation was given fresh impetus last month when the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), an alliance of British archive organisations, produced a report on the state of the digital industry.
'The report looks at where we are at the moment and what the requirements will be for digital technology,' says Maggie Jones, the executive secretary of the DPC. 'The benefits of digital technology are enormous - it has transformed the way we work and got rid of all geographic boundaries.'
But Jones acknowledges the museum sector is not moving en masse to embrace digital technology. 'Some museums have come quite a long way and the National Archives has shown a lot of leadership,' she says. 'A lot of the smaller museums and archives are not as advanced. It can be difficult for them to obtain the skills and they can find it daunting.'
The key method for digitising museum artefacts and archives is posting them on the internet, while CD-Roms can provide a useful back-up. Generally museums don't place high-resolution images of artefacts on the web but retain the image on a CD.
But obsolescence remains a major concern: some archivists, only half in jest, suggest that the only safe and reliable format is still acid-free paper.
Take one example, the 1986 multimedia version of the Domesday Book, with its 250,000 place names and 25,000 maps, spectacularly juddered to a halt in 2002. The technology involved in displaying the 12in videodiscs of British life - once cutting-edge - had become obsolete, rendering the information unreadable.
'Technology moves on very quickly,' says Jones. 'There isn't yet a comprehensive system anywhere in the world that can guarantee that you can continue to access things like we can with print media.'
But she says there should be quite a lot of warning that technology is going to disappear.
'We know that floppy discs will be obsolete before long, so you can help to mitigate against obsolescence by having strategies in place before the technology goes. The first priority has been to improve access, and that's fine. But we need to make sure that access isn't short-lived.'
According to Nick Poole, the director of MDA, which provides documentation and information management for UK museums, complacency is not an option.
'The issue is not just about preserving the object but also preserving the context - both the picture and the software,' he says. 'We are at the infancy of a long-term process. It's something of a brave new world.' Museums need to move quickly or they will face problems, he adds.
The technology is understood better than it was five years ago, Poole says. 'But the question is how we sustain that understanding in the long term. Digital archiving has been seen as a separate area and not a core function of museums.
That doesn't equate to bringing the knowledge of digital archiving into museums. How do we set up digital archives so that when the next curator comes along in five or ten years' time they can actually access it?'
The question of how museums prioritise material to be recorded digitally is also problematic. According to Poole the sector is becoming more needs-and-market driven. 'There is a need to demonstrate user benefits, and the ability to make information available online will become one of the most important aspects of museum services,' he says.
The DPC also recognises that selection is a major issue. 'Selection is bound up with what the organisation's mission is and their own strategic priorities,' says Jones. 'They need to be judicious.'
Museums must also guard against seeing digital preservation as a panacea, cautions Alastair McCapra, the chief executive of the Institute of Conservation. 'Digital preservation is very useful in many circumstances but it is not the magic answer,' he says.
'Is it right to digitally record millions of documents that are in reasonable condition when changes in technology may mean you have to do it all again in ten years' time? I don't get the sense that there is a universal stampede to digitisation, but there is a risk that once a few large national institutions go this way others tend to follow in their footsteps.'
This a quandary faced by many local and regional museums and archivists. If Birmingham's city archives were placed end to end, they would stretch for six miles.
'There's no way, and no point, in us digitising huge tracks of our collection,' said Sam Collenette, the acting head of archives for Birmingham City Council. 'We don't see digitisation as a preservation tool because the format remains unstable and changes so rapidly. We use microfilm as a preservation media as we know it lasts for at least
100 years.'
Digital media is used for the conversion of catalogues. 'Our priority has been to tackle the catalogue backlog and use the digital format to increase access to it,' said Collenette.
The increased interest and activity in the UK is mirrored by greater efforts at digitisation across the European Union (EU). Last year the European Commission announced that it intends to intensify the preservation of Europe's written and audiovisual heritage.
A key project has funded the development of a virtual reality system for scanning and exhibiting museum artefacts, that faithfully reproduces the surface texture and shine of displayed items. The procedure, funded with a Euro 1.4m grant from the EU, captures 3D models with their reflective properties and combines the object's geometry, appearance and glossiness.
The picture data is collected in the photographic studio, where the team lights up facets of the object from different angles to determine the reflection characteristics of every point of the surface.
Feedback from museums and experts has been positive: a virtual kiosk has been set up in the Duomo Museum in Pisa where user studies have been carried out showing a high level of acceptance, satisfaction and usability of the system.
'Our libraries, our films, our historic television and sound records not only need to be preserved; we also need to make better use of them in the fields of culture, education, information and research,' says Viviane Reding, the information society and media commissioner for the European Commission. 'Digitising this heritage is a marvellous opportunity which our industry should grasp.'
Ultimately, the challenge presented by digitisation is that life constantly evolves and that obsolescence is inevitable, says Collenette. 'We just have to hope there will be some kind of emulator to enable us to access material as the medium changes.'
Mark Rowe is a freelance journalist
Links
A number of organisations offer advice on how to approach the task of digitising material. These include the National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) and the MDA (www.mda.org.uk) and the DPC (www.dpconline.org)
Also visit Birmingham City Council (www.birmingham.gov.uk/archives) and the Institute of Conservation (www.icon.org.uk)
For details of the European Union 3D model project, visit: www.vihap3d.org
For more information on the Digital Preservation awards, visit: www.consawards.instituteofconservation.org.uk/dpa2005_shortlist.html
The £5,000 Digital Preservation Award was awarded to PREMIS - the Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies working group. This team of 30 experts from five countries published a Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata and other tools to provide guidance for institutions that need to manage digital materials.
The issue of digitisation was given fresh impetus last month when the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), an alliance of British archive organisations, produced a report on the state of the digital industry.
'The report looks at where we are at the moment and what the requirements will be for digital technology,' says Maggie Jones, the executive secretary of the DPC. 'The benefits of digital technology are enormous - it has transformed the way we work and got rid of all geographic boundaries.'
But Jones acknowledges the museum sector is not moving en masse to embrace digital technology. 'Some museums have come quite a long way and the National Archives has shown a lot of leadership,' she says. 'A lot of the smaller museums and archives are not as advanced. It can be difficult for them to obtain the skills and they can find it daunting.'
The key method for digitising museum artefacts and archives is posting them on the internet, while CD-Roms can provide a useful back-up. Generally museums don't place high-resolution images of artefacts on the web but retain the image on a CD.
But obsolescence remains a major concern: some archivists, only half in jest, suggest that the only safe and reliable format is still acid-free paper.
Take one example, the 1986 multimedia version of the Domesday Book, with its 250,000 place names and 25,000 maps, spectacularly juddered to a halt in 2002. The technology involved in displaying the 12in videodiscs of British life - once cutting-edge - had become obsolete, rendering the information unreadable.
'Technology moves on very quickly,' says Jones. 'There isn't yet a comprehensive system anywhere in the world that can guarantee that you can continue to access things like we can with print media.'
But she says there should be quite a lot of warning that technology is going to disappear.
'We know that floppy discs will be obsolete before long, so you can help to mitigate against obsolescence by having strategies in place before the technology goes. The first priority has been to improve access, and that's fine. But we need to make sure that access isn't short-lived.'
According to Nick Poole, the director of MDA, which provides documentation and information management for UK museums, complacency is not an option.
'The issue is not just about preserving the object but also preserving the context - both the picture and the software,' he says. 'We are at the infancy of a long-term process. It's something of a brave new world.' Museums need to move quickly or they will face problems, he adds.
The technology is understood better than it was five years ago, Poole says. 'But the question is how we sustain that understanding in the long term. Digital archiving has been seen as a separate area and not a core function of museums.
That doesn't equate to bringing the knowledge of digital archiving into museums. How do we set up digital archives so that when the next curator comes along in five or ten years' time they can actually access it?'
The question of how museums prioritise material to be recorded digitally is also problematic. According to Poole the sector is becoming more needs-and-market driven. 'There is a need to demonstrate user benefits, and the ability to make information available online will become one of the most important aspects of museum services,' he says.
The DPC also recognises that selection is a major issue. 'Selection is bound up with what the organisation's mission is and their own strategic priorities,' says Jones. 'They need to be judicious.'
Museums must also guard against seeing digital preservation as a panacea, cautions Alastair McCapra, the chief executive of the Institute of Conservation. 'Digital preservation is very useful in many circumstances but it is not the magic answer,' he says.
'Is it right to digitally record millions of documents that are in reasonable condition when changes in technology may mean you have to do it all again in ten years' time? I don't get the sense that there is a universal stampede to digitisation, but there is a risk that once a few large national institutions go this way others tend to follow in their footsteps.'
This a quandary faced by many local and regional museums and archivists. If Birmingham's city archives were placed end to end, they would stretch for six miles.
'There's no way, and no point, in us digitising huge tracks of our collection,' said Sam Collenette, the acting head of archives for Birmingham City Council. 'We don't see digitisation as a preservation tool because the format remains unstable and changes so rapidly. We use microfilm as a preservation media as we know it lasts for at least
100 years.'
Digital media is used for the conversion of catalogues. 'Our priority has been to tackle the catalogue backlog and use the digital format to increase access to it,' said Collenette.
The increased interest and activity in the UK is mirrored by greater efforts at digitisation across the European Union (EU). Last year the European Commission announced that it intends to intensify the preservation of Europe's written and audiovisual heritage.
A key project has funded the development of a virtual reality system for scanning and exhibiting museum artefacts, that faithfully reproduces the surface texture and shine of displayed items. The procedure, funded with a Euro 1.4m grant from the EU, captures 3D models with their reflective properties and combines the object's geometry, appearance and glossiness.
The picture data is collected in the photographic studio, where the team lights up facets of the object from different angles to determine the reflection characteristics of every point of the surface.
Feedback from museums and experts has been positive: a virtual kiosk has been set up in the Duomo Museum in Pisa where user studies have been carried out showing a high level of acceptance, satisfaction and usability of the system.
'Our libraries, our films, our historic television and sound records not only need to be preserved; we also need to make better use of them in the fields of culture, education, information and research,' says Viviane Reding, the information society and media commissioner for the European Commission. 'Digitising this heritage is a marvellous opportunity which our industry should grasp.'
Ultimately, the challenge presented by digitisation is that life constantly evolves and that obsolescence is inevitable, says Collenette. 'We just have to hope there will be some kind of emulator to enable us to access material as the medium changes.'
Mark Rowe is a freelance journalist
Links
A number of organisations offer advice on how to approach the task of digitising material. These include the National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) and the MDA (www.mda.org.uk) and the DPC (www.dpconline.org)
Also visit Birmingham City Council (www.birmingham.gov.uk/archives) and the Institute of Conservation (www.icon.org.uk)
For details of the European Union 3D model project, visit: www.vihap3d.org
For more information on the Digital Preservation awards, visit: www.consawards.instituteofconservation.org.uk/dpa2005_shortlist.html
