Creating a Concept Study of the Diverse Formats and Materials Pertaining to the Digital Preservation of Cultural Artifacts and Other Holdings

Digitization enables unhampered access to information, the worldwide networking of information service providers, improvement of the international visibility of scholarly archives, and of course the preservation of valuable and/or endandered originals. At the interface between the constantly increasing need for information in digital form and the necessary preservation of cultural artifacts and other holdings, digitalization is critical and will soon be unavoidable for many libraries, archives and documentation centers. Certain of these scholarly archives already have experience in this area, others are interested, while still others, for various reasons, have not yet come to grips with the matter. The present technical solutions still frequently run up against brick walls and, for most institutions, are neither financially feasible nor doable in terms of personnel.

It is in particular the small and medium-sized scholarly libraries of a specialist nature, like the IAI (Ibero-American Institute), which are presented with the challenge of preserving and making electronically accessible their mostly heterogeneous holdings through affordable digital technology that is still of a standard which can meet the high demands placed on it. Therefore, in order to compile a concept study on the digital preservation of cultural artifacts and other holdings, the IAI is working in close cooperation with the Fraunhofer-Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK), leading experts in the virtual reconstruction of damaged documents, and with arvato direct services Wilhelmshaven GmbH, a service company of international repute. Building on a systematic inventory of that digital technology which is already coming to be deployed, the goal is to develop reasonably priced, innovative and flexible technical solutions for the automated digitalization of printed cultural artifacts in various formats and consisting of diverse materials. It is in such a way that even smaller and medium-sized scholarly archives, documentation centers, and specialist libraries will be able to guarantee the preservation of cultural bequests and simultaneously process their digital holdings for users. The project is embedded in the “Forschungsallianz Kulturerbe” (“The Cultural Legacy Research Alliance”), which was brought into being in 2008 by the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer Society), and the Leibnis-Gemeinschaft (Leibniz Association).

The project has a time frame of eighteen months, during which period the IAI will undertake to analyze and characterize its broad holdings profile with respect to materials, formats, preservation statuses, and user modalities. Furthermore, IAI personnel will discuss and decide what factors go to influencing the strategy undertaken for a digitalization project, and the experiences of similar institutions with digitalization projects will be collected and evaluated. It will also be determined what technologies for digitalization and digital preservation already exist and not only where and how but if they can be expanded. Also the legal framework of any such massive digitalization project must be staked out and it must also be properly embedded in the everyday life of the scholarly information institute.

Along with the conceptualization of new technologies, the project aspires to develop an integrated concept for digitalization projects in smaller and medium-sized scholarly archives, documentation centers, and specialized libraries—a concept that will not only facilitate the IAI’s digital projects but will serve as an example for other scholarly archives with similar projects.