Snapshots: Photographic Digitization
- sararebstock
- Jul 19, 2024
- 2 min read
Archives can be very personal for its users simply by the nature of the materials collected. I am certain that many archivists have an emotional story of assisting a user in finding that one piece of their family history that they had long been searching for. In my opinion, one of the most personal aspects of archival holdings is the photographic collections. This is due to how meaningful it can be to visually see scenes of the distant and not-so-distant past that an individual had only heard before. Photographic materials also have the benefit of generally being easy to scan and digitize.
As discussed in Do You Hear the People Sing?: Audiovisual Digitization, digitization allows materials to take on a new life and provides greater access to distance users. Digitizing photographs usually entails running the materials through a scanner, saved onto the sever that best suits the archivist or institution, named using the proper naming conventions, and organized in a useful, recognizable manner. All together, it is a fairly straight forward process, unlike more complex materials. However, that does not negate the potential cons associated with deciding to digitize photographic materials. One potential con that is important to be discussed is the time-cost associated with this manner of digitization.
While updated technology has streamlined many aspects of digitization, it has to be acknowledged that technology is not so advanced that digitization processes can be automized. A human component must be factored into all digitization projects, which can be quite costly time wise. Depending on the scale of the project, a full digitization project can take a number of weeks or months to complete. All projects of this type must be considered on whether the potential positive effects are worth the time required for completion. Photographic material projects can become very repetitive of loading the scanner and saving the digital item. However, the benefits of further access can never be overstated.
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