The dataset is a mixture of scanned photographic images, other images and some born digital assets which represent samples of the work of Vanley Burke (b. 1951), photographer currently active in Birmingham, UK. The images were scanned by various members of staff at Birmingham Archives and Heritage over a number of years and with varying amounts of metadata. The quality of the various scanned images is unknown. There are also 9 files of images which were created by the photographer. The sample provided is approximately 30 TIF files and 9 JPG files. The technical metadata is either present or can be extracted but the descriptive metadata is not present or only minimally present. The original physical prints and other visual materials which are catalogued and deposited at Birmingham Archives and Heritage. The originals of the 9 additional JPG files rest with the photographer.
All the material is copyright of Vanley Burke and the dataset material can only be used by the developers within the context of the Mashup.
The dataset is owned and managed by The Digital Lab, Birmingham Archives and Heritage, Birmingham Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham B3 3HQ Tel 0121 464 1619/email [email protected]
Issues Brainstorm
Although there sample collection consists of image files, the larger institution collection contains other formats.
- Auditing digital collection
- What tools are available to help?
- What information is needed from tools?
- Managing collections of digital images?
- e.g. transferring content, bit-level fixity checks?
- Authentication/integrity
- Recording authentication information?
- Metadata Extraction
- Extracting descriptive and technical metadata?
- Preservation Actions
- What actions might want to be applied to files, for example file migration?
- Quality Assurance
- Workflows
Solution priorities
Metadata extraction – creating a code for extracting descriptive metadata to help identify the file types and identify the existence or otherwise of descriptive metadata. Looking for tools to map file migration and capturing information
Checksumming - identifying solutions for checking authenticity
Preservation planning: identifying preservation planning tools eg PLATO, DRAMBORA