Digital Preservation and Visualization of Historical Artifacts
Historical disasters such as fires, floods, mildew, bookworms, bookbinders, zealots, reformers, Vikings, censors, acidic paper, and modern restorations, have deprived us of many cultural treasures. The residue of many of these disasters is nonetheless carefully preserved by repositories throughout the world, even when they are seemingly unusable because of their fragile or illegible state.
Even with artifacts in good condition, collections are frequently not available to the public. In many of these cases, libraries, museums, and research scholars want to acquire, manipulate, and provide remote access to (and high-definition display of) digitized artifacts and need cost effective, non-intrusive, easily configurable methods for creating and viewing high-quality collections.
Researchers at the Center are developing and evaluating new techniques for digital acquistion, restoration, and visualization using real-world library collections with particular focus on the preservation and dissemination. With the aid of expert consultants who, we are developing and deploying prototype systems for acqusition and display.