Archiving 2019 offers a unique opportunity for imaging scientists and those working in the cultural heritage community, as well as in government, industry, and academia, to discuss the latest technologies and most pressing issues related to the digital preservation and stewardship of hardcopy, audio, and video.

Archiving 2019 takes place May 14–17, 2019, in Lisbon, Portugal at the Torre do Tombo National Archive (National Archives of Portugal). The early registration deadline is April 15. Organized by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T), the conference presents the latest research on digitization and curation, provides a forum to explore new strategies and policies, and reports on successful projects that can serve as benchmarks in the field. View the conference program for full details.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Digitization, Preservation, and Access.” The conference features three full days of technical programming, keynote presentations, short courses taught by industry experts (six new courses for 2019), and behind-the-scenes tours at local cultural heritage institutions.

TECHNICAL PROGRAM

The conference kicks off with welcoming remarks from Archiving 2019 leadership and Silvestre Lacerda, director-general of the Torre do Tombo. Following the opening remarks, Luis Pavão, director of LUPA, will lead a group of panelists from important photographic collections in Portugal in a discussion about current efforts in to digitize their rich photographic history.

The three full days of technical programming includes papers on the following topics:

• Preservation/Archiving: Standards and Guidelines
• Digitization: Large Scale/Mass Digitization and Workflow Management Systems
• Preservation/Archiving: Archival Models and Workflows
• Access: Formats for Preservation and Access
• Management and Partnerships/Collaborations: Best Practices, Lessons Learned, and Case Studies
• Access: Integration of Linked Open [usable] Data (LOD/LOUD), Open Source Solutions, and APIs
• Digitization: New Developments in Technologies and Workflows

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Opening Keynote (Wednesday, May 15):
Jonas Palm, Riksarkivet/National Archives (Sweden)

“How the Market Changed – And the Lives of Photographs”

Palm will look at how photography has changed in the last 20 years and how that has altered the lives—not only of the photographs, from film and prints to images only viewed on monitors—but also of those who work to preserve these “objects.”

Thursday Keynote (Thursday, May 16):
David Taubman, UNSW Sydney, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, Deputy Head of School (Research), and Kakadu Software Pty. Ltd., Director (Australia)

“The JPEG2000 Suite of Standards: Capabilities and New Opportunities”

JPEG 2000 is a family of standards that provide efficient and highly-scalable coding of imagery, capable of handling content with extreme resolutions and bit-depths. Taubman’s presentation will increase awareness of what JPEG 2000 can do, focusing on capabilities that could be of great benefit in archival applications.

Closing Keynote (Friday, May 17):
Jean-Yves Le Meur, CERN, Digital Memory project leader (Switzerland)

“CERN’s Digital Memory: When Patrimony Data Meets Scientific Data”

Le Meur will discuss the European Organization for Nuclear Physics’ (CERN) Digital Memory project, started 2016 to ensure the long-term preservation in digital format of the historical and recent assets of the organization. Le Meur will talk about how this massive digitization gives access to content full of surprises and to new projects of enhancement through art, cinema, or virtual reality.

SHORT COURSE PROGRAM

Tuesday, May 14, features a full day of short courses featuring 12 introductory to advanced courses taught by industry experts from the Library of Congress, Open Preservation Foundation (OPF), National Library of the Netherlands, and more.

The course topics range from color measurement and spectral imaging and feature six new courses this year including:

JHOVE 101: Open Source File Format Validation: This course provides participants with an understanding of how to use JHOVE, a file format validation tool; how to interpret the results; and how to contribute to improving open source tools.

End-to-End Digitization Workflow: Goobi-to-Go for Newbies: This course explains how the Goobi software suite (Goobi workflow and Goobi viewer) is used to manage small and even big digitization projects.

Introduction to Digital Image Processing: This course provides the attendee with insight into image processing algorithms including image filtering, frequency analysis, edge detection, and feature extraction.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES TOURS

Each year, the Archiving Conference prepares a set of Behind-the-Scenes Tours at local cultural heritage institutions where participants learn about the digitization, preservation, and access processes, challenges, and successes of colleagues. All tours take place Thursday afternoon. Some of this year’s tours take place at the following locations:

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (art library and archives)

The Art Library and Archives contains more than 190,000 titles of monographs, general works, and reference materials; architectural and artists archives; more than 200 photographs; the most significant Portuguese collection of artist books; and the Foundation Archive.

Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa | Fotográfico and LUPA, Luis Pavão Lda (conservation and digitization departments)

Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa | Fotográfico is charged with preserving the photographic history of Lisbon, providing a library for researchers, and mounting photographic exhibits of interest to the community. LUPA has been working with public and private photographic collections since 2002.

Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo

This tour focuses on the preservation, conservation, and restoration of archival documents, and then visits the department of digitization. Attendees will learn about the precautions required for preservation, from the handling of documentation and packaging, to the physical evaluation system for direct and remote access.

Cineric Portugal

Cineric Portugal digitally restores and grades films that are scanned at Cinemateca Portuguesa’s ANIM facility for clients from around the world. The tour will discuss the restoration workflow process and how it can differ depending on the condition and type of the source material.