Guidelines: Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials
Still Image Working Group

The Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials represents shared best practices followed by agencies participating in the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI).  This document draws substantially on the National Archives and Records Administration’s Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Records for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files – Raster Images (June 2004), but has been revised and updated in several areas to reflect the current recommendations of the working group and to reflect changes that have occurred in the digitization field during the last five years.

Document Background

The Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials: Creation of Raster Image Master Files represents shared best practices followed by agencies participating in the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Still Image Working Group for digitizing cultural heritage materials. This group is involved in a cooperative effort to develop common digitization guidelines for still image materials (such as textual content, maps, and photographic prints and negatives) found in cultural heritage institutions.

These Guidelines were prepared by members of the working group during the winter of 2009-2010. This document draws substantially on the National Archives and Records Administration’s Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Records for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files – Raster Images (June 2004), but has been revised and updated in several areas to reflect the current recommendations of the working group and to reflect changes that have occurred in the digitization field during the last five years. Readers will find updated sections covering equipment and image performance metrics, quality management, and metadata in this revision.

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Current Document

Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials  (PDF, 5.43 MB)

Updated by Working Group – August 24, 2010

Working Groups

Still Image Working Group
This group is involved in a cooperative effort to develop common digitization guidelines for still image materials.

Audio-Visual Working Group
The goal for this working group is to identify, establish, and disseminate information about standards and practices for the digital reformatting of audio-visual materials by federal agencies.