Imaging collections to enable new connections
by Dave Sanderson
The Museum’s collections vary considerably in their nature, both in their intellectual significance and their physical form. When it came to establishing a programme of work to ‘digitise’ these collections, it was their physical form that posed one of the biggest challenges. Digitisation in its broader sense implies not just the act of scanning or photographing something, but also having the associated metadata to attach this media to, ultimately to enable discovery. The Museum’s Collections Readiness programme sought to address all aspects of digitisation by running four cataloguing projects in tandem with a project to photograph the collections. Running these two tasks in tandem has posed a second significant challenge.
Imaging of flat 2D works has been progressing at the museum well for some time, largely focused on Documentary Heritage collections and the museum’s significant collection of Botany specimens. In 2015, when the museum established its Collection Imaging Project, the focus was largely on the Museum’s Natural Sciences and Human History collections which are comprised almost entirely of three dimensional objects. In order to image the objects in a way that illustrates their shape we realized each type of collection object would benefit from a distinct way of being photographed or lit, and so it raised the question of exactly how we wanted to image the collections. Automated solutions and equipment often produced results that showed the imaging equipment or stage, lacking overall polish. These required post production work to produce high quality results. Traditional photographic techniques, while potentially slower, produced a high quality end product fit for multiple uses.
The Museum seeks to use the newly created images not just for publication online as a way to liberate the collections, but also for collection management purposes: a record of the objects’ condition at a point in time and also as foundational elements for the Museum’s Gallery Renewal projects. The images we created had to be fit for all of these purposes, and so we arrived at the ‘90% rule’ concept. If on one end of a spectrum we had poor quality images shot under poor conditions, and on the other we had high end advertising/auction house images, what the Museum sought to achieve was 90% of that high quality, but quickly. Additionally, the Museum sought to create images in such a way that they are sound for long term digital guardianship. Alongside the Museum’s born-digital collections, these images are digital assets which will stand the test of time. This has limited how digital images can be created and placed a real focus on photographing our collections smartly and efficiently.
Other mass-digitisation projects globally have used production lines, conveyor belts, barcoding and automation to achieve throughput in their imaging programmes. Auckland Museum looked at this carefully when embarking on its own projects as a way to realise similar benefits. Many of these projects rely on substantial work on the collections prior to imaging to allow for automated processing to occur, significant staff time applying barcodes and intensive assembly of the collections before being sent down conveyor belts. Additionally the equipment and systems often lend themselves to one type of collection before needing significant modification to suit another.
With Auckland Museum’s parallel projects for cataloguing, collection management and imaging happening all at once, there were no assembled collections with barcodes waiting to be sent down conveyor belts — Collections Readiness work was happening across many work-streams at the same time. This has meant that the imaging project reacts not just to backlogs of collections which are already catalogued (the Museum’s Land Vertebrate Study Skins collection, catalogued in its entirety already, was the first collection to be imaged) but also to collections being worked on at the same time in other projects. The imaging project also embeds rights assessment and management as one of its core functions, placing the OpenGLAM philosophy at the heart of its work. These functions occurring in parallel has meant that the success of the imaging component of the Collections Readiness programme is inextricably linked to working alongside the various collections teams and projects in harmony.
The Collection Imaging project has had to seek efficiency through alternative routes to offset the limitations of not using automated technology and working in tandem with other Collections Readiness projects, while in turn realizing the benefits of high quality images and traditional studio control. Images are created in a highly efficient operating environment modelled on techniques used in manufacturing and ‘just-in-time’ delivery. 100% of images are created using tethered software, named using a unique identifier at the point of capture which ultimately links it to its collection item within our collection management systems. The capture environment is colour managed allowing for accurate exposure and colour to be set at the point of capture and the project photographers work in such a way that no photo editing is required afterwards — what is captured by the camera is the end product. This brings both efficiency but also more stable files for long term digital preservation.
Images created have been designed to integrate as seamlessly as possible with the Museum’s new Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), the final foundational platform for the digital museum, which is currently being deployed. The breadth of the collections imaged provides both variety and inspiration to the teams internally and within the communities we serve. Nowhere is this seen more than with the Museum’s Moana Pacific and Māori collections where, as information and images are created, we see communities reconnect with their ancestors and new connections with contemporary artists and community groups being forged. With specimens from tiny snail shells to whale skeletons and botany sheets, flamingos and zebras; with objects from WWII flags to horology tools, jewellery and firearms, the variety is endless. The collection images are encountering a warm reception and developing new audiences by supporting alternative ways of working online.
These new ways of working and the growing re-use of digital versions of our objects come hand in hand with new considerations and the Museum has responded by ensuring that there are robust, legal and ethical protocols in place to meet those needs.
