How does a digitization project in
Orem, Utah impact the education of schoolchildren in Cleveland, Ohio?
Early in 2002, librarians at the Cleveland Museum of Art's Ingalls Library faced a dilemma. With their library ranking as the fourth largest at an American art museum, the Museum's librarians dealt regularly with decisions about how to direct the development and manage the accessibility of their collection.
One important decision involved the library's 300,000-item collection of 35-mm slides. This collection, representing a comprehensive treatment of the world's artistic and architectural history, was designed to assist teachers, students, and researchers. Yet, with slide projectors going the way of phonographs and slide rulers, this valuable collection faced the possibility of quickly becoming irrelevant.
Happily, the Museum's librarians discovered a positive solution amidst the march of technological change. By digitizing the images in their slide collection, they could continue to preserve the collection's core benefits while also enlarging its potential for accessibility in entirely new formats.
Through 2003, librarians at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with the assistance of the staff at Backstage Library Works, researched scanning equipment and processes. After reviewing 18 different scanners, they chose the Imacon Flextight for its superior image quality. Its software allowed efficient scanning of archival-quality 48-bit images at a resolution of 3000 dpi and provided an array of powerful color management features. Such features gave the Museum confidence that it could achieve its priority of preserving the appearance of its original slides.
With suitable equipment chosen, the Museum librarians and the staff at BSLW next developed an efficient process for handling such a large volume of physical slides and for storing such a daunting quantity of digital image data. Together they developed solutions which allowed for organized retrieval of each original image file, its associated derivative files, and its accompanying metadata information.
Perhaps the Museum's largest decision concerned whether to bring BSLW staff and equipment on-site to Cleveland. When they instead chose to transport the collection to the company's headquarters in Utah, BSLW's team provided the guidance and materials necessary to ship such materials safely and economically.
More than two years later, the digitization team at Backstage Library Works continues working with the Cleveland Museum of Art--this time on the Museum's fourth slide digitization project.
With their continued success, Cleveland's schoolchildren will benefit for years to come.
