Digital Reformatting


          
           Digital reformatting is the process of converting analogue materials into a digital format as a surrogate of the original. The digital surrogates perform a preservation function by reducing or eliminating the use of the original. Digital reformatting is guided by established best practices to ensure that materials are being converted at the highest quality.


Imaging Standards

         The Library in Congress has been actively reformatting materials for its American Librery  project and developed best standards and practices pertaining to book handling during the digitization process, scanning resolutions, and preferred file formats. Some of these standards are:
  • The use of ISO 16067-1 and ISO 16067-2 standards for resolution requirements.
  • Recommended 400 ppi resolution for OCR ed printed text.
  • The use of 24 bit color when color is an important attribute of a document.
  • The use of the scanning device's maximum resolution for digitally reproducing photographs
  • TIFF as the standard file format.
  • Attachment of descriptive, structural, and technical Metadata to all digitized documents.

Audio standards

           The  International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) has produced guidelines on the creation and preservation of digital from analogue originals. The guidelines cover:
  • selection and preparation of best available copy for digitising
  • optimising signal extraction
  • analog-to-digital converter technical specifications
  • audio digitised at 24-bit word length and a minimum 48,000 samples/sec
  • target audio format: linear PCM Broadcast Wave Format
  • storage recommendations

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Information technology and access to networks

Economics of Digitization