Library of Congress to Digitise National Treasures
Library of Congress to Digitise National Treasures
Month Date, 2007: The world’s biggest library, the American Library of Congress has announced plans to digitise some of the rarest and most valuable documents and photos on this earth.
The Library is trying to preserve some of the rarest parts of its collection through digitisation, these include a panorama image of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, a photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken four days before he was assassinated and a picture of the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk.
The digitisation project is actually a re-digitising of the existing tif’s into higher density records such as the JPEG 2000 format. The records will also allow greater public access to the documents as the circulation of a digital image is far easier then moving the original.
“JPEG 2000 holds promise in the areas of visual presentation, simplified file management and decreased storage costs. It offers rich and flexible support for metadata, which can describe the image and provide information on the provenance, intellectual property and technical data relating to the image itself.” Said Michael Stelmach, manager of Digital Conversion Services at the Library of Congress.
Xerox scientists will develop the process and test it extensively before working with the originals.
“Much of the world’s knowledge and creativity are stored in digital formats. Applying Xerox’s expertise in digital imaging to the problem of preserving the nation’s treasured images is a great example of how industry and government can harness their individual strengths to solve a pressing issue,” said Sophie Vandebroek, president of the Xerox Innovation Group and the company’s chief technology officer.