Article: A Format for Digital Preservation of Images: A Study on JPEG 2000 File Robustness

For those of you interested in JPEG2000, you may want to read this article. Abstract:

Digital preservation requires a strategy for the storage of large quantities of data, which increases dramatically when dealing with high resolution images. Typically, decision-makers must choose whether to keep terabytes of images in their original TIFF format or compress them. This can be a very difficult decision: to lose visual information though compression could be a waste of the money expended in the creation of the digital assets; however, by choosing to compress, the costs of storage will be reduced. Wavelet compression of JPEG 2000 produces a high quality image: it is an acceptable alternative to TIFF and a good strategy for the storage of large image assets.

Moreover, JPEG 2000 may be considered a format that can guarantee an efficient robustness to bit errors and offers a valid quality with transmission or physical errors: this point of view is confirmed by the case study results that we report in this article, concerning image quality after occurrence of random errors by a comparison among different file formats. Easy tools and freeware software can be used to improve format robustness by duplicating file headers inside or outside the image file format, enhancing the role of JPEG 2000 as a new archival format for high quality images.

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Technorati tag: JPEG2000

Article: A Digital Libraries Curriculum: Expert Review and Field Testing

Quoting....

In 2006, the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH SILS) and the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech (VT CS) took the first steps toward developing an interdisciplinary curriculum for digital library (DL) education. Our project was introduced in an earlier D-Lib Magazine briefing; further details are available on the project website and wiki.

What came out of this work are 14 modules that have been developed including a module on digitization. 28 modules still need to be written. The first article on this topic notes:

These materials are intended for use in both computer science and library and information science programs, so input is being gathered from colleagues in both disciplines.

I wonder if other library and information science programs will re-think their curriculum -- even a little bit -- based on this work in North Carolina?

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Technorati tag: Digital Libraries

The Wenger sound isolation booth at Baylor University

Baylor University has a Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. In order to digitize the materials, the library built a sound isolation booth in February 2007. The library has photos of the booth's construction on its web site. The library does not provide links about the Wenger sound isolation booth, but a quick search located information the company and its isolation booth product.

Thanks to Kim Ewart for pointing on the photos on the Baylor web site.

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Technorati tag: Digitization

Event: Digital Preservation Training Programme, London

This was posted to the Digital-Preservation list by Patricia Sleeman, who writes:

I am pleased to announce that the date and venue for the next Digital Preservation Training Programme has been confirmed for 20th-22nd October 2008, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The course uses a pedagogical approach to training and involves group work and interaction. The cost is £500 and does not include accommodation but we can recommend hotels in the vicinity for you.

For more details about this event please see http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/dptp/.

The booking form can be found at
http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/dptp/future-courses/booking-form.html.

If you have any questions regarding this, please contact us at dptp-admin@ulcc.ac.uk.

Please book early to avoid disappointment as we have limited spaces due to the nature of the course.

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Technorati tag: Digital Preservation

Blog post: Update on BigTIFF

Gary McGath wrote a blog post on BiggTIFF early in July. For those who know nothing about BigTIFF, the post and the comments will be useful. And the post includes links to additional information.

What is BigIFF? It's a technical standard. Quoting McGath:

BigTIFF changes the TIFF format by using 64-bit offsets and otherwise keeping everything else as much the same as possible. This means it can describe really large images. It also means that software that handles TIFF can be modified to handle BigTIFF with relatively little programming effort.

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Technorati tags: Standards, Digital Image