The digitisation process in images – “A Future for the Past - Cultural Heritage in a Digital World”
To accompany the first publication by the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, “A Future for the Past – Cultural Heritage in a Digital World”, photographer and film theorist Jürgen Keiper has produced an impressive series of photos showing the physical process of digitising material held in libraries and archives. Ranging from the mechanics of book transportation and antique-looking presses to hypermodern scanning robots, the images immerse the viewer in a largely unfamiliar world.
By publishing these photos the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek intends to convey the complexity and highly specialised nature of the cultural heritage digitisation process and the importance of treating old and fragile objects with consummate care and professionalism. The Library also hopes that these remarkable photos, released under open licence, will be disseminated widely and raise public awareness of the issue of digitisation.
In the course of the project Keiper visited institutions such as the scanning centre of the Bavarian State Library, the German National Library (Leipzig), the Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum Berlin and the German National Library of Science and Technology Hannover (TIB). Here the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek shows a selection of photos from the publication. The entire series, released under the CC BY 4.0 licence, can be viewed here and is available for download at the end. The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek would like to thank the photographer, Jürgen Keiper, for his work and for releasing his images for general use, free of charge.
“This series of photos charts the development of memory organisations. They have long been part of a major cultural and industrial combine, without falling within the definition of the culture industry. However, the spectrum of memory organisations has broadened and digitisation and automation are leaving their mark. My project explores this juxtaposition of modernisation and tradition. Nowhere are these conflicting orientations more evident to me than in the renaissance of wood as a manufacturing material, as seen in the wall panelling of modern library reading rooms and as a constituent part of highly automated book scanners. But then there’s the fragility of books and papers, which are often found to be beyond saving.” – Jürgen Keiper
Photographs as JPGs: Download
Acknowledgements: Jürgen Keiper, CC BY 4.0
The publication and additional photos from the series can be obtained here (print / e-book) or read here online. All texts have been released under CC BY 4.0 licence.
Jürgen Keiper has worked at the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum for Film and Television since 2006, heading the section for IT and IT projects such as LOST FILMS, the online presentation accompanying “wir waren frei … snapshots from 1989/90”, “First we take Berlin” (with Peter Paul Kubitz) and the development of collaborative systems. With Chris Wahl he set up the memento-movie.de blog devoted to audiovisual heritage. Before that he published “Film und Kritik” magazine (1992 – 1999), was a research associate at the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main (1993 – 1997) and then worked at the Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF (1997 – 2006), where he led the IST’s COLLATE project – Collaboratory for Annotation, Indexing and Retrieval of Digitized Historical Archive Material (2000 – 2003), filmportal.de (2003 – 2006), MIDAS – Moving Image Database for Access and Re-use of European film collections (2005 – 2006) and was convenor of the Standardisation working group for filmographic entries at European level in partnership with CEN – European Committee for Standardization (2005 – 2006). Numerous lectureships, talks and expertises relating to film and new media. On the staff of AG Media in the nestor competence network.