Book review - Urumaco and Venezuelan Paleontology: The Fossil Record of the Northern Neotropics. Edited by Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra, Orangel A. Aguilera, and Alfredo A. Carlini (original) (raw)

Chapter 3 Digitisation : Methods , Tools and Technology

2018

All recorded information in a traditional library is analogue in nature. The analogue information can include printed books, periodical articles, manuscripts, cards, photographs, vinyl disks, video and audio tapes. However, when analogue information is fed into a computer, it is broken down into 0s and 1s changing its characteristics from analogue to digital. These bits of data can be re-combined for manipulation and compressed for storage. Voluminous encyclopaedias that take-up yards of shelf-space in analogue form can fit into a small space on a computer drive or stored on to a CD ROM disc, which can be searched, retrieved, manipulated and sent over the network. One of the most important traits of digital information is that it is not fixed in the way that texts printed on a paper are. Digital texts are neither final nor finite, and are not fixed either in essence or in form except, when it is printed out as a hard copy. Flexibility is one of the chief assets of digital informatio...

The process of digitising natural history collection specimens at Digitarium

Digitarium is a joint initiative of the Finnish Museum of Natural History and the University of Eastern Finland. It was established in 2010 as a dedicated shop for large scale digitisation of collections. The paper gives an overview of the steps of digitisation process, including tagging, imaging, data entry, georeferencing, filtering, validation, publishing, and archiving. A functional model is presented. The work at Digitarium is independent of any collection management software. Instead, the digitisation process is managed through XML-documents and versioning. All specimens are imaged and distance workers take care of the digitisation from the images. Data and images are published through Morphbank and GBIF.

The Rise of Digitization: An Overview

In Rukowski, R. (ed). (2010). "Digital Libraries". Sense Publishers, The Netherlands. p. 3-20., 2010

Digital libraries depend on digital content. There are information objects which are “born digital”, having been created by computational technologies and never existing in analogue format, but the majority of holdings offered by digital libraries were created through the process of digitization, “the conversion of an analog signal or code into a digital signal or code” (Lee 2002, 3). The information, culture, and heritage sectors were quick to embrace digitization technologies as they became available, primarily to facilitate access to items in collections by providing them in electronic format. Producing digital versions of holdings through digitization has become an industry in itself, and there has been much effort devoted to producing guides to best practice for undertaking the digitisation of library and archive material. This chapter provides an overview of the rise of digitization, demonstrating the phenomenal recent uptake of digital technologies within the library sector, laying the foundations for the digital libraries of the future.

Digitization: An Overview of the Advantages and Disadvantages

Digital Libraries - Definition, Types, and Library Space [Working Title]

Collections are the heart of museums, born for anyone’s benefit. In order to ensure people to enjoy collections, museums operate as the stewards of items to preserve them for today and future generations. Due to the growing technological improvements and the advent of the Internet, collections have been made available for the audience’s benefit, both offline and online. The topic of digitization of collections and associated information is of the utmost importance inasmuch as it depicts a powerful tool for creating automated processes to manage collections for internal work purposes and disseminating culture within and beyond the museum walls. This paper aims to provide the reader with a general picture of the matter. For this purpose, it illustrates the development of digitization since its first steps, when cultural institutions started approaching the usage of computers in the 1960s. Then, this study focuses on the main advantages and disadvantages of digitization. For instance, ...

Digitization in Archival Material Conservation Processes

European Journal of Engineering and Technology Research, 2021

The purpose of this paper is the digitization process and the techniques used, in cases of archival material preservation. Digitization as a process, whether it involves old documents and old maps, or audio and video clips, is the most appropriate process not only for the protection, but also for the reuse, upgrading and highlighting of cultural heritage elements. In this paper, the main problems are presented divided into the main categories of archival material (photographic material, printed material, audio, and video material) while at the same time the equipment and means used are presented.

THE NEED PRESERVATION OF LIBRARY MATERIALS: DIGITIZATION

In today's world of electronic information, librarians have directed their attention and efforts towards digitization. Digitization has been widely used as a method for conserving libraries' collection, in particular the special collections of rare books, manuscripts and archives. Conversion to a digital format gives the users a new range of search tools, since what is created is a file that can be manipulated as any other electric data file.

Natural History Specimen Digitization: Challenges and Concerns

Biodiversity Informatics, 2010

A survey on the challenges and concerns involved with digitizing natural history specimens was circulated to curators, collections managers, and administrators in the natural history community in the Spring of 2009, with over 200 responses received. The overwhelming barrier to digitizing collections was a lack of funding or issues directly related to funding, leaving institutions mostly responsible for providing the necessary support. The uneven digitization landscape leads to a patchy accumulation of records at varying qualities, and based on different priorities, ultimately influencing the data's fitness for use. The survey results also indicated that although the kind of specimens found in collections and their storage can be quite variable, there are many similar challenges across disciplines when digitizing including imaging, automated text scanning and parsing, geo-referencing, etc. Thus, better communication between domains could foster knowledge on digitization leading to efficiencies that could be disseminated through documentation of best practices and training.