Digital Media

DIGITISING YOUR OWN MEMORIES Your task is to select an item (might be a book or picture) you would like to digitise. Your essay should reflect on why you think it would be good to digitise this object, and think about what technologies you might use to do so. Reflect on the following points: - Why is this object significant to you? It doesn’t have to be personal, but spend a little time thinking about why you would like to be able to display it online. - What would you like others to be able to do with it? Read it, search for full text, or just view images? - How would you digitise it? - Think about the “aura” or historical context of this object – what will happen to this when it’s digitised? Will it remain constant, will it lose something compared to your memory of the physical object, or will it add to your experience somehow? And how? TASK 2: BECOMING ONE WITH METADATA: APPLYING A METADATA SCHEMA TO DIGITISED OBJECTS Your task is to digitise your chosen object, and to create a metadata description. You don’t have to worry too much about producing a professionally digitised object, but do try to get the best image possible. There is also no need to digitise the entire object if it’s a book – choose the most important aspects, which might be the cover, front page, a particularly interesting drawing or section of text, or a particular quote. Once you have done this, then use your 500 words to reflect on the process of creating a digitised version of your object: • How successfully has your chosen object translated to digital form? Is there anything else that you would do, time and technology permitting, to improve how it is presented? • How effective is the metadata in capturing the essence, or the aura of your object? Did you have to add, or remove anything from metadata schema in order to describe your object properly? • Given that we created this metadata schema by studying a really specific object, how well does it translate to the object you chose to digitise? And related to Dublin Core, which is a metadata standard, would it have been easier to use this standard? • Thinking of Derrida, how has the technical process of digitising your object affected how it will be archived, and therefore experienced in the future? TASK 3: PRESENTING YOUR DIGITISED MATERIALS Please present your digitised item(s) relating to Task 1 and Task 2. Please provide images and metadata for the image/images, using a suitable layout to display each clearly. The images and metadata do not contribute to your word count. Your written task is to reflect on the process and/or significance of making them available online to a new audience. When doing so, think about some of the following: - What kind of audience might want to look at your item(s)? What aspects of your item translates to the new medium, and what might have been lost? - What aspects of providing digitised media online are beneficial? And what challenges are there in relation to the original archival artefact? If you choose the process, think about how you went about digitising the material – what standards did you adopt? What resolution were the images in, and what equipment did you use? What did you learn about the remediation of physical artefacts in digital form, and what considerations are at the heart of this process?