Monday, September 8, 2014

International Informational Resources for digitisation and documentation of cultural materials:



Digital Coffee – (http://www.yale.edu/digitalcoffee) The mission of the Yale Digital Coffee group is to establish core standards, develop resources, and provide guidance and support for Digital Imaging related technology, projects, and professionals on campus. The primary focus is on issues and topics related to still photography.

dp Bestflow – (http://dpbestflow.org/) dpBestflow is a new guide to digital imaging technology and workflow from ASMP, a leading group in education for the professional photographer.

ImageMuse – (http://www.imagemuse.org) ImageMuse is a group of museum imaging and publishing professionals, dedicated to defining guidelines for the creation and use of digital files for reproduction.

MCN – Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) MCN supports museum information professionals and the greater community by providing opportunities to explore and disseminate new technologies and best practices in the field. MCN hosts an annual conference, special interest groups, listserv, and a project registry.

UPDIG – Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (http://www.updig.org) The UPDIG Coalition is dedicated to promoting standards for photographic digital imaging. The UPDIG guidelines aim to clarify issues affecting accurate reproduction and management of digital images. These guidelines were created to establish photographic standards and practices for photographers, designers, printers, and image distributors. The guidelines cover Digital Asset Management, Color Profiling, Metadata, and Photography Workflow.

Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative – (http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages) This group is involved in a cooperative effort to develop common digitization guidelines for still image materials. An important and helpful aggregation of resources may be found here, including technical guidelines for digitizing cultural heritage materials http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/documents/FADGITechnicalGuidelines-2010-06.pdf

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Resources for the preservation of variable media works

The DOCAM Conservation Guide, prepared by the DOCAM Research Alliance Conservation and Preservation Committee, is a practical guide to help museum professionals choose the best conservation approach for works containing technological components. The guide is based on the results of research conducted as part of DOCAM case studies and also takes into account various existing conservation models.

Electronic Arts Intermix is a resource for finding variable media artists, as well as providing resources on preservation and advocacy. The EAI OnlineResource Guide for the collection, display, and preservation of media art lays out the issues involved in conserving time-based art. Particularly recommended are the “basic questions” sections, and the condition reports.

The Electronic Media Group of the American Institute for Conservation provides a forum for the conservation of artifacts falling under the time-based media rubric.

Forging the Future “refines and distributes free and open-source products that boost access and aid in preservation” of our digital heritage.

Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) is committed to the independent artist working in with the variable medium. It provides preservation resources, classes, and advocacy.

Matters in Media Art is a “multi-phase project designed to provide guidelines for care of time-based media works of art.”

The Variable Media Initiative, a seminal project, pairs artists with museum and media consultants to provoke comparison of artworks created in ephemeral mediums. The initiative aims to define each of these case studies in terms of medium-independent behaviors and to identify artist-approved strategies for preserving artwork with the help of an interactive questionnaire.

LIMA preserves, distributes and researches media art, they provide services for artists and collections, as well as training courses and workshops.

Do you manage digital files in an archive, museum, library, studio, business, or government office?
This innovative distance-learning program could be for you. Our students learn how to collect, make accessible via database and Web site, and preserve digitized and born-digital assets, from VHS tapes to JPEGs to Word documents. Study online at the University of Maine and get up to speed on all things digital with their online course. 

Re-collection, the first academic book on new media preservation!!!

By Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito


The authors make a startling claim: that the historical record of our era will be unretrievable without a drastic change in the technologies, institutions, and laws that now govern cultural preservation. Weaving theory into practice, Re-collection spells out much-needed, real-world approaches to preservation along with their theoretical foundations and implications.
Written by two internationally acknowledged trailblazers in the field, Re-collection includes extensive case-studies of specific digital and media art works in the collections of museums and collectors that have been the focus of experimentation and research by the authors and their colleagues directly in the preservation effort.


Still Water Blog - an AMAZING resource, which includes reviews and articles on innovation in the field.


Scanlines collects together information about Australian media artists, curators, organisations and events since the 1960s. The database is an ongoing and evolving resource dedicated to information pertinent to artists, works and events that have Australia-wide and international significance. It consolidates and links to substantial materials (biographical information, videos, catalogue essays)

You can contribute to its growth and maintain data ensuring the inclusion of media based artworks in the historical record.


Digitising Contemporary Art |Guidelines for a Long-term Preservation Strategy for Digital Reproductions and Metadata
Curatorial Resource for Upstart Bliss (CRUMB) CRUMB aims to help those who 'exhibit' new media art, including curators, technicians and artists.



MeLa* European Museums in an age of migrations is a four year long research project funded by the EuropeanCommission under the Socio-economic Sciences andHumanities Program (FP7th). MeLa* is aninterdisciplinary programme which reflects on the newmuseums role with the aim to define new strategies forcontemporary museums in a context characterized by acontinuous migration of people and ideas.


Preservation of complex objecte (POCOS)

The aim of the POCOS project was to deliver a series of three symposia at locations across the United Kingdom at which global thought-leaders in research into the Preservation of Complex Objects would share and thereby extend the body of knowledge on this topic.


Saturday, August 9, 2014

Resources to help with getting yourself, your organisation and the conservation profession out there.

There are hundreds of web based platforms which are free, and can make your life easier by reducing admin loads. Learning how to use them helps develop useful skillsets, which can add value to you and your organisation.

Firstly, there are many free blog platforms, with easy to use templates and zero fees. This is one of them and took me less than a minute to set up.  Just click this link and it will take you to the google blogger pagewhere you can set up a blog of your own. You can actually set up multiple blogs and manage them all from the same dashboard. If you can make a word document, you can make a blog!

Learn to embed widgets into your blog so that updates automatically feed into Facebook and Linked In and Twitter. When people comment on posts on Facebook with links, it increases the search engine optimisation.

HINT: If you are cutting and pasting into your blog from other documents, remove your formatting first as bits of code you cant see can make spacing and layouts do strange things.

Click here to go to a great article on free domain names and blogs.

For making surveys and questionnaires painless, use Survey Monkey.  They have easy templates, responses are automatically collected and you can analyse and download results in graphs and pie charts.

Mailchimp is a fabulous outgoing mail server, you upload your contacts and use their templates - which are easy to customise. Recipients can unsubscribe easily. The great thing about this sort of system is measurability, you can see how many people actually open the emails and click through to the embedded links - this is a great way of managing email databases and generating statistics as tools for decision making.

Vistaprint is a great place to get free and very cheap printed collateral, from business cards to brochures, banners even T shirts and mugs. If you sign up, they will send you spam, but often this spam has very good free offers.

Prezi is a fabulous online tool for making and sharing dynamic presentations, they also have solid hints and tips on how to make an engaging public presentation.

Issuu is an excellent online publishing tool. All you have to do is upload a PDF! You can also embed ISSUU publications into your blog. All you have to do is embed the code in the HTML editor, like this...