There is no reason that you couldn't accession the digital artifacts
that have been given to the museum, just like you could accession a
new paper print from an old negative. But I agree that you shouldn't
collect and accession flippantly, and making a separate "study" or
"library" collection may be the way to go, since the ethics and
logistical ramifications would be different..
Much of the literature on digital collecting ultimately comes down to
the fact that digital imagery is easy and cheap to obtain, but
incredibly expensive and labor-intensive to process, preserve, and
make publicly available using best-practices. Such best-practices
include making high-quality original files that are uncompressed,
making a second set of lower-quality compressed images, doing regular
backups, and mass-migrating data if a digital format becomes obsolete,
on top of the more traditional cataloging and curating. So you
probably need to have a conversation about which digital assets are
important enough to be accessioned, and develop a plan for caring for
them.
Here is a link to the UK's Digital Curation Centre, which might be
useful. It covers all kinds of data: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/
I would be interested to know what other organizations, publications,
blogs, and so forth that you all follow, regarding the issue of
digital collecting, preservation, and curation.
All the best,
Travis
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Sarah Griswold <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I am wondering what the general wisdom is regarding the cataloging of
> scanned photographs, when the original photographs remain in a private
> person's possession. If they allow us to scan them and then use the scans as
> we choose, should we consider the scans part of our photograph collection,
> and add them to Past Perfect? For us they exist ONLY in digital format.
>
> The curator would like to add them to the collection so that online viewers
> can see the images, but I'm not sure that they should be accorded status
> equivalent to actual artifacts.
>
> We don't have any specific wording in our collection policy that addresses
> the issue of copies vs. originals, and in the case of photographs, it's a
> very thorny issue anyway.
>
> Thanks for any comments
>
> Sarah Griswold
> Curatorial Consultant
> Curatorial Assistant, Gunn Memorial Museum, Washington, CT
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