Digitization Standards and Equipment
- Shelby Lakins
As a minimum, the Blanton should scan records according to the FADGI Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials. The focus of these digitization guidelines is on historical, cultural, and archival materials, and the scope is limited to practices for materials that can be reproduced as still images. Though the guidelines are intended to be informative, they are not prescriptive, and it is important to find a workflow that works for the individual institution.
Below is a guide for minimal quality and format types for various types of materials – the Blanton’s institutional records primarily consist of textual materials, both with and without images, as well as visual materials, so take special note of the bolded sections.
Type of Material | Resolution | Master File Format | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
Textual materials with no images | 400 PPI | PDF/A | Optional Character Resolution (OCR) applications work best on documents scanned at 400 DPI or higher. |
Textual materials with illustrations | 400 PPI | PDF/A | Optional Character Resolution (OCR) applications work best on documents scanned at 400 DPI or higher. |
35mm slides, film and negatives smaller than 4”x5” | Min: 2000 PPI Ideal: 4000 PPI | Min: JPEG Ideal: TIFF | We aim for images to have 4000 pixels across long dimension of image area, excluding mounts and borders |
Photographic prints | Min: 300 PPI Ideal: 600 PPI | Min: JPEG Ideal: TIFF | We aim for images to have 6000 pixels across long dimension of image area |
Posters, prints, and maps larger than 8”x10” | Min: 400 PPI Ideal: 600 PPI | Min: JPEG Ideal: TIFF | We aim for images to have 6000 - 12,000 pixels across long dimension of image area |
Audio | 96 kHz | .wav or .aif | Web access files: 320 Kbps sampling rate. File format: mp3 |
Video (transferred from VHS or other analog source) | 720x486 | .mov or .avi | Web access files: 1.5 Mbps sampling rate. File format: mp4 h.264 |
Digital video | Native | Native, or .mov or .avi | Web access files: 1.5 Mbps sampling rate. File format: mp4 h.264 |
Welcome to the University Wiki Service! Please use your IID (yourEID@eid.utexas.edu) when prompted for your email address during login or click here to enter your EID. If you are experiencing any issues loading content on pages, please try these steps to clear your browser cache.