Denise,

I spent some time reading a lot of the other replies
and figured it was time for my 2 cents, from a
non-museum environment.

I work with a blueprint company, whose priority is
digital storage and reatrieval for printing purposes. 
The archival quality of digital formats has been
disucssed here and in other threads, but one comment
may be, is this in regards to digital deterioration or
simply from a future anticipation of changes in
digital environments (i.e. new formats, etc.).

From our point of view (i.e. less money, the better),
we have installed a simple external drive to back up
our server on a nightly basis.  This rewrites the
entire server onto the drive, avaioding the
deteriorating aspects of digital formats.  Notably, a
decent developer (with a small museum, MS Acess or
Virtual Studio would work), can write a database to
retrieve all aspects of the artifact, including an
image, except for the actual artifact itself.

Thus, the root question is, and this has been brought
up, the purpose of the digitization.  If its for
retreival (i.e. an elaborate card catalog), then it
would simplicty would be the way to go.  I also agree
with the dividing up the collections, even a small
museum can reveal itslef to be a monster collection of
individual items.

If the purpose is to produce an archival-quality
photographic collection, a small budget makes things
rather difficult.  This should be brough to the
attention of museum curators and its representative
hierarchy.  There is a myth that digital environments
are easy to produce by simply snapping a photo with a
digital camera.  I've learned the hard way, that it is
not.

In regards to starting, I would expect that there
would already be in-place a paper version of what they
expect in digital.  I would familarize myself with
that in regards to developing a game plan, making it
similar would be a comfortable starting point.

However, being at work and starting to ramble, I'll
end here, hopefully to incur some comments from the
others, which will be helpful on both our parts.

Cheers,
Brad Holderman
Coat of Arms

--- Denise Haynes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


---------------------------------

Greetings to the list,

I have volunteered to photograph the collection of the
local historic house/museum (READ SMALL MUSEUM/
Practically Nonexistant Budget!). Having said that, I
would like some advice from the sages on this list
regarding my endeavor....

The board wants the collection photographed with a
digital camera; fair enough, but, in light of the
non-archival quality of digital photography, shouldn't
I also photograph it with B&W film?  (I need to speak
to members of the board to get needed supplies)

Any additional advice on proceding with what almost
seems like a daunting task is welcomed! (i.e. what
type of paperwork to keep..etc.)

Thanks so much in advance!

Denise





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