NARA's Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files – Raster Images

Written by Steven Puglia, Jeffrey Reed, and Erin Rhodes, this June 2004 document is something that I haven't mentioned before and it seems worthwhile noting (remembering).  This 87-page guideline for the following record types - textual, graphic illustrations/artwork/originals, maps, plans, oversized, photographs, aerial photographs, and objects/artifacts - is extensive and contains illustrations. 

According to the scope:

The Technical Guidelines presented here are based on the procedures used by the Digital Imaging Lab of NARA’s Special Media Preservation Laboratory for digitizing archival records and the creation of production master image files, and are a revision of the 1998 “NARA
Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access”, which describes the imaging approach used for NARA’s pilot Electronic Access Project.

The Technical Guidelines are intended to be informative, and not intended to be prescriptive. We hope to provide a technical foundation for digitization activities, but further research will be necessary to make informed decisions regarding all aspects of digitizing projects. These guidelines provide a range of options for various technical aspects of digitization, primarily relating to image capture, but do not recommend a single approach.