To second Guy Herman's recent message on this subject:
 
Last time I looked at this area there was a choice of several
different technological approaches, all of which could be appropriate in
certain circumstances (eg low resolution digital, such as PC or Mac; high
resolution digital eg Photo-CD; broadcast quality analogue; high definition
analogue; pre-press).
 
When considering an image storage project some of the key aspects to consider
are the initial format of the images; the resolution that they are to be
displayed at; whether printed output from the digital data is required;
whether a long term (perhaps high resolution) archive is required to be kept;
how many images are required to be kept; do they need to be networked, or
is stand-alone the optimum configuration; and so on.
 
These aspects need to be resolved, and appropriate overall technology selected,
before getting down to the detail of individual boards, display technology,
etc.
 
In most large scale image storage projects the cost of scanning the images,
and creating the descriptive and indexing text is much greater than the cost
of the technology, even if a high resolution technical approach is chosen.
 
Ben Booth  The Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD [log in to unmask]