SPRING 2021 ROUND TABLE REPLAYS
A GLOBAL GATHERING FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE PROFESSIONALS
Our Cultural Heritage Round Tables began as small, one-off gatherings between Digital Transitions and our clients, as a formal way for us to gather the community’s collective feedback on their experience with our equipment and how we could work to improve it.
Since its inception, the event has grown from a single day at our office to two annual conferences in key regions across the United States (now being held virtually). Attendees come from a variety of countries, disciplines, and institutions to demo new digitization technology, learn best practices, discuss workflow tips, and network with other cultural heritage professionals.
We have made our Round Table presentations available for replay in an effort to share this invaluable knowledge with the rest of the heritage community. We hope you enjoy the following presentations found in this playlist.
Theater
Spring 2021 Round Table
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Christopher will be presenting on workflow and data management implications for cultural heritage imaging of significant sensor size upgrades based on my experience of upgrading to a 150MP medium format back from a hybrid 40MP MF/36MP DSLR operation. Covered topics will include: Workflow, storage and backup issues; versioning and derivative creation; criteria for imaging which objects with which system (or does everything need 150 megapixels?); how much resolution is enough; hardware implications for computational imaging techniques with large sensor image files.
Examples will be taken from my experience at a mid-sized museum with a relatively small but widely varied collection and may not be directly applicable to high-volume digitization operations, though I hope that the underlying principles and issues will be relevant to anyone practicing imaging in the cultural heritage space.
Featured Speaker:
Christopher Ciccone | North Carolina Museum of Art
Christopher is a Collections Photographer and Digital Asset Manager at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, where he has over 12 years of museum digital imaging experience. As part of the Visual Resources department, he is responsible for imaging objects in the NCMA’s permanent collection both for publication and for the NCMA’s Conservation department. He is also responsible for establishing workflows, training, governance and evaluation of the museum’s digital asset management system. Prior to working in the cultural heritage space, he had experience in a wide range of commercial photography environments. He is the chair of the Digital Imaging Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Museum Computer Network, and is a member of the American Institute for Conservation’s Digital Imaging Working Group. He regularly teaches workshops for artists wishing to document their own work and maintains a sporadic practice in fine art photography.
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This talk will discuss the peculiarities of digitizing 230mm (9”x9”) aerial film reels using the DT ATOM system in conjunction with its DT Reel Top. Topics covered will include: capture parameters, workflow, common issues and creative solutions, film condition, and learning curve.
Featured Speakers:
Tye Pemberton | USC Digital Libraries
Tye is the Digital Imaging Manager for the USC Digital Library. He holds an MFA from Columbia and an MLIS from Syracuse University and was a co-founder of the Werewolfhhaus film production company. Over the past 20 years he has worked on digitizing and cataloging items from the California Historical Society, Columbia’s University Seminars, and Frank L. Tannenbaum collections, the Los Angeles Examiner, ONE Magazine / Mattachine Society, and the Department of Defense.
Jennifer Sullivan | USC Digital Libraries
Jennifer brings to the table 21 years of experience imaging Cultural Heritage materials. As a Digital Imaging Specialist with the USC Digital Library she currently works on the DIMOC project digitizing aerial film & Arlington National Cemetery Ledgers. Other projects include digitizing USC’s ONE Archive LGBTQ poster collection, and Independent & Webster Commission Records relating to the LA Riots of 1992.
Jennifer cut her Cultural Heritage teeth as the Special Projects Photographer at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens where she gained experience digitizing Medieval Manuscripts, rare books, photographs, glass plates, nitrate & panorama negatives, and lots of ephemera.
“I never planned on being a Cultural Heritage photographer. I had planned to document the world as a photo-journalist. But I have to say, I love what I do. The historical materials I get to see & handle are amazing. I find the challenge of figuring out how to digitize varied &/or fragile materials, just plain fun. Frustrating sometimes, but fun.”
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Too often important information about natural history collections is unavailable due to inaccessibility. For 3-D scientific collections, mass digitization can provide a valuable tool for research and data retrieval. In 2014, DT Heritage partnered with the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office to safely and efficiently digitize the Museum’s bumblebee specimens.
After the initial pilot project, the digitization team worked together to create comprehensive physical, imaging, and digital workflows so that the specimens and information could be captured quickly and accurately.
During the second phase in 2019, they were able to digitize over 30,000 3-D bumblebee and carpenter bee specimens in just under 8 weeks! Due to this effort, the entire bumblebee and carpenter bee collections are available online. Over 74,000 of these images will be a part of Smithsonian’s open access initiative where they are available for immediate use. As a result of mass digitization and accessibility initiatives such as these, specimen and label information from natural history collections can be preserved and accessible for years to come.
Featured Speakers:
Jessica Bird | Smithsonian Institution
Jessica is the Acting Collections Information Manager for the Department of Entomology at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. She oversees the digital curation of the entomology collection which includes over 35 million specimens and genetic material. Through the creation and implementation of workflows, she works to increase the collection’s digital presence.
Hannah Storch | DT Heritage
Hannah is a Project Manager with DT Heritage, specializing in cultural heritage digitization. After obtaining her B.A. in Classics and History from Grinnell College, Hannah attended Georgetown University, where she received her master’s degree in Art and Museum Studies. She has worked in collections and development at a variety of museums and archives, including The National Museum of Women in the Arts, The National Museum of African Art, and The National Museum of Natural History.
Her role at DT Heritage has enabled her to partner with institutions, embracing the opportunities that collection digitization brings to institutions and the communities they serve. Along with the daily tasks of image production, image processing, and staff supervision, Hannah has also created digitization workflows and programs that optimize productivity while emphasizing preservation. Working hands-on with physical collections, Hannah never ceases to be amazed by the ability of cultural heritage institutions to piece together the past, one collection object at a time.
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Jarob will discuss the National Park Service’s transition from traditional large format photography to born-digital capture. He will highlight some of the new technology being implemented during the Park Service’s testing phase and the pros and cons of each format as they pertain to NPS’s photographic documentation workflow. Jarob will also talk about his thoughts on some of the new capabilities of modern digital systems and how they may completely change our country’s approach to documentation photography.
Featured Speaker:
Jarob Ortiz | National Park Service
In 2016, Jarob was selected out of a field of over 4,000 applicants to serve as HDP’s large format film photographer. Since then, he has produced more than 3,000 large-format views – all archived at the Library of Congress and serving as public record. He specializes in architectural and industrial photography and loves the technical challenges associated with recording historic structures. Jarob was born in Milwaukee, WI, and attended the Milwaukee Area Technical College – earning an Associate in Applied Science in Photography. He now works out of Washington D.C.
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This talk will discuss the peculiarities of digitizing 230mm (9”x9”) aerial film reels using the DT ATOM system in conjunction with its DT Reel Top. Topics covered will include: capture parameters, workflow, common issues and creative solutions, film condition, and learning curve.
Featured Speaker:
Franz Herbert | Chameleo
Franz is the founder of Chameleo. Franz holds a Diplom Ingenieur degree in Computer Science from the Technical University of Vienna and a Master’s degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2004, Franz started a software consulting business – Chameleo with basICColor input 5 being the first application for profiling digital cameras from Raw data developed in collaboration with basICColor. As of 2019, Franz was developing basICColor input 6 and basICColor display 6 pro by himself. input 6 pro is now used by many museums around the world.
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Indeed, go to work we did at ISA over the last year. Slowing down and focusing on missed details and product improvements has been a silver lining for ISA’s Cultural Heritage imaging products and services that Digital Transitions supports. This talk will briefly describe several product improvements as well as new thinking on popular topics like color profiling, color measurements, Golden Thread targets, and software, and let’s not forget lessons learned in FADGI guideline practices.
Ease of use and interpretation of image quality analysis results have been the main focus of the new Golden Thread NXT software. This software version now supports the new FADGI 19264 compliant target and provides onboard colour profiling and autonomous colour reference data deployment for all targets.
New thinking on teaching-to-the-test ΔE measurements and colour measurement instrumentation will also be offered to stir your imagination. Experiences, both good and bad, with the FADGI guidelines, are on the table, especially their adaptation to digitizing Federal Records (NARA’s M-19-21) with high-speed sheet-fed scanners. Any guesses on pages/minute at 3-star.
Featured Speaker:
Don Williams | Image Science Associates
Don is the Founder of Image Science Associates (ISA), a small group of elite specialists dedicated to science-based digital image capture protocols as reflected in the Golden Thread software and imaging targets they developed and evolve. His early 25 yr. career was as a research imaging scientist at Eastman Kodak where he was exposed to a broad category of digital and analog imaging modalities. Since 2007 then he has worked with the world’s largest library to help create and modify the FADGI still imaging guidelines and the supporting reference targets and software to support that effort. He is a participating member of ISO TC42/WG18 for digital capture performance metrics and was the editor for ISO 12233 for camera and scanner resolution measurement. He frequently teaches and consults on image quality performance and methods to accomplish accurate and consistent outcomes.
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Imagine a ruler that grew or shrank in length over time. Such is the challenge of using color targets in real-world digitization; even carefully-used targets become dirty over time, leading its color values to diverge from its most measurement. We will discuss best practices for how to keep your target in good condition, how to clean it, and how to know when it’s time to re-measure and when to throw it away.
Featured Speaker:
David Wyble | Avian Rochester
David is the president and founder of Avian Rochester, LLC. Since 2011, Avian Rochester has been delivering color standards; traditional and custom measurements; and consulting services to the color industry. For the last six years, he has worked under contract with the Library of Congress developing physical imaging targets and color imaging workflow technologies. For over 20 years he has taught color and imaging undergraduate and graduate university classes and various professional short courses. He received an MS in Color Science from RIT, and a Ph.D. in Color Science from Ciba University, Japan.
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Image quality is of paramount importance in Heritage work, and guidelines and standards like FADGI, Metamorfoze, and ISO 19264 are critical tools for achieving excellent, consistent results. However, guidelines and standards aren’t laws or absolutes, and there are cases where blindly following standards can have unintended consequences. In this session, we’ll examine FADGI’s core structure, discuss how and why the guidelines were created, and explore some of the limitations of a strictly quantitative approach to evaluating image quality.
Featured Speaker:
Arnab Chatterjee | Digital Transitions
Arnab is the Head of Product Management at Digital Transitions. He has a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. With a passion for digital imaging, he works to research and develops existing solutions to better serve Cultural Heritage digitization.
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History Factory delivers archival expertise and capabilities to businesses and organizations. The Company’s offerings range from end-to-end heritage asset management solutions to limited-focus project support services. While the Company’s Archives Lab represents a highly unique setting for practicing the archival profession, the work done by History Factory archivists is fully consistent with accepted standards of collection care and management. To meet the specific requirements of its client base, however, History Factory also brings to bear a number of special strategies, techniques, and interventions.
The presentation will describe how a flexible methodology that is grounded in archival fundamentals but appropriately responsive to business realities enables History Factory to effectively serve its clients. Two case studies will illustrate key aspects of the methodology in action.
Featured Speakers:
Tim Schantz | History Factory
Tim has been History Factory’s Managing Director of Archives & Content Solutions for 6.5 years. Tim relies on the guiding principle that protecting and preserving the raw digital and physical material of our clients’ heritage is both a great responsibility and an opportunity to provide innovative solutions for using their heritage to inform and support their future. Heritage is his passion, and he is proud to oversee an expert archival team that creates sustainable archival programs in accordance with best practices but customized to clients’ business needs and priorities. His goal has always been to ensure that History Factory’s archival advice and work secure the sanctity of content for future generations and business goals by making certain that it is relevant and accessible today.
Chris Juhasz | History Factory
Chris is a Certified Archivist and History Factory’s Senior Director or Archives and has 20 years of experience providing archival and digital archives services to academic, corporate, public, and nonprofit institutions. He works with clients to build and manage archival programs that combine state-of-the-art content management technologies with library science best practices. Chris excels at designing and implementing archival information systems for clients whose resources are decentralized, fragmentary, and largely inaccessible to potential audiences. He and his team strive to make the archival function more proactive and service-oriented to enable clients to more easily use their institutional heritage and archival content to support existing and future goals.
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The Hawaii State Archives is legislatively mandated to collect, arrange, describe, and make accessible the Public Archives. This is a tall task when the geography of the State necessitates nearly half the population to book a flight and rent a car to access their own public records.
To address this difficulty, the State Archives is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to making public records public through online access. This session will discuss this initiative from select, capture, quality assurance, indexing, and online display of these irreplaceable historic materials (hint: Our DT Versa and DT Atom play a pivotal role in this!)
Featured Speaker:
Dr. Adam Jansen | Hawai’i State Archives
Dr. Jansen is the State Archivist of Hawaiʻi. He has a Master of Science from Eastern Washington University in Business Administration and Computer Science, graduate certificates in Intellectual Property Management and Information Assurance/Cybersecurity from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Prior to leading the Hawaiʻi State Archives, he served as Deputy State Archivist at the Washington State Archives, where he designed and managed the first fully functional state digital preservation system. He has, at one time or another, held the following certifications: CRM, MCP, MIT, and CDIA.