The Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) has become the cornerstone for digitizing physical records and cultural heritage materials within the United States. FADGI has set critical benchmarks for image quality, consistency, and preservation, and the guidelines are beginning to show signs of international adoption, including at the National Library of Australia.

Countries worldwide are increasingly focused on preserving their cultural heritage digitally, and FADGI's comprehensive guidelines offer a structured approach that can be adapted to various types of materials, from manuscripts to business contracts and even artworks. This flexibility makes it an attractive model for global institutions.

As digital archives become more common, there is a growing need for standardized practices to ensure interoperability and longevity of digital records. FADGI provides a blueprint for successful standardization that is appealing to many international organizations.

Advancements in imaging technology along with practical use cases for digital preservation have led to strong demand for high-quality digital captures. FADGI guidelines are continuously updated to incorporate new technologies and the needs of various niches, such as business records, legal contracts, and so forth. This process helps make FADGI guidelines relevant and forward-looking, which encourages adoption in countries that want to modernize their digital archives.

One of the more recent updates to the FADGI guidelines includes new quality criteria for preserving “modern textual records,” or MTR. This change reflected the real-world need to distinguish between various types of physical records.

Most documents scanned today fall under the MTR category (typical documents on standard white office paper). The need for separate guidelines for documents as different as business records and historic blueprints, for example, became very clear.

When It Comes to Image Quality, Context Is Important

FADGI standards were crafted to ensure that digital reproductions of cultural heritage materials maintain the quality and integrity of their physical counterparts. The guidelines cover technical imaging parameters and best practices for digital image conformance evaluation.

The star rating system, which ranges from one to four stars based on image resolution, colour accuracy, and other factors, provides a clear and quantifiable measure of digital image fidelity, particularly for archival purposes.

When it comes to digitizing historical documents for preservation, image enhancement is not permitted; the goal is a precise replication of the original, including any flaws that might exist. Over many decades, advancements in document scanning technologies have been focused on producing digital images that are clearer and sharper than the original so that data can be accurately extracted and delivered into business systems. But with important archival records, data extraction is usually not relevant—all that matters is the precise digital preservation of an original document.

This reality has forced BPOs and other service organizations to re-evaluate their fleet of document scanners to ensure they have the right hardware to cover this growing need for precise standards in digital preservation.

Government agencies and other organizations that submit records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) are looking into ways to simplify FADGI compliance and get the most bang for their buck, and that search is leading them to Kodak Alaris.

Scanners from Kodak Alaris produce output that complies with both image quality guidelines, FADGI 3-Star and MTR. In addition, FADGI scanners from Kodak Alaris have the unique ability to switch between output modes, making it easy for scanner operators to deliver FADGI-compliant images when necessary, and then switch to normal document scanning for more traditional purposes, such as accurate data extraction. This capability is like having two scanners in one, and it’s simplifying FADGI compliance for many organizations while also saving them a lot of time and money.

Global Collaboration

Another reason FADGI has been catching on around the world is because the FADGI process has been open to international input, with many public comments received from global experts in the field. This collaborative spirit has fostered a sense of global community around these image standards.

Institutions outside the U.S. have begun referencing FADGI guidelines along with other archival standards, including museums, libraries, and archives in Europe and Australia.

The adoption of FADGI standards globally has clear benefits, but some challenges remain. Each country has unique cultural contexts and legal frameworks concerning digital rights and heritage, and this reality might require new adaptations of the standards.

In addition, countries that adhere to existing digitization standards, such as Metamorfoze and ISO 19264-1, might consider FADGI as supplementary, rather than as a replacement for those standards.

Like many things in the technology space, developments in the U.S. tend to expand abroad. Only time will tell if FADGI continues to capture mindshare across the world, but it seems likely. The global adoption of FADGI standards is about a shared commitment to preserving cultural heritage with the highest fidelity possible.

As more international institutions witness the benefits of these technical standards, there's a strong possibility that FADGI will become the global standard, advancing consistent digital preservation into the future.