Permanent pixels

Abstract

Within the context of long-term access to digital objects in general this dissertation takes the longevity of digital surrogates of historical photographs into consideration. For memory institutes digitisation of analogue source material, such as historical photographs, is an exciting way to open up and exploit their holdings. The focus on the digital durability of this specific type of digital object enables the investigation of available building blocks for digital preservation, such as strategies, guidelines, standards, procedures and tools. A benchmarked digital capture process, the unambiguous formulation of preservation metadata and the application of persistent identifiers for digital objects, all based on open standards are important building blocks for the realisation of durable digital surrogates of historical photographs. Three methods for creating durable digital objects are assessed in detail. These are the application of a standardised digital image file format, the relevance of the application-independent XML data format for the encoding of a digital image, and unambiguous formulation of preservation metadata with the help of an international standard (ISO/IEC 11179). The research can be considered as a case-study in digital archiving and contributes to the improvement of the durability of digital objects in general.