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Preservation Research Publications

Research & Testing Series - Digitizing Visual Materials

Research and Testing Series

This series of reports is the result of research carried out for the Preservation Research & Testing Division, either by its own staff or under contract with other institutions or private vendors. All of the reports listed below are available in print upon request via our online form: Ask a Librarian.

No. 9501: Effect of Some Deacidification Agents on Copper-Catalyzed Degradation of Paper.
C.J. Shahani & F.H. Hengemihle. November 1995.

No. 9502: Desorption of Residual Ethylene Oxide from Fumigated Library Materials.
Frank H. Hengemihle, Norman Weberg & Chandru Shahani. November 1995.

No. 9503: Accelerated Aging of Paper: Can it Really Foretell the Permanence of Paper.
CJ Shahani. November 1995.

No. 9604: Cylinder Audio Recordings: An Annotated Bibliography
Gibson, Gerald D., with Carole Zimmermann and Terry Erb. 1996

No. 9705: Digitizing Library Collections for Preservation and Archiving: A Handbook for Curators.
Report submitted under contract to the Preservation Research & Testing Division of the Library of Congress by William R Nugent,. 1997.

No. 9806: Unified Strategy for the Preservation of Audio and Video Materials
Report submitted under contract to the Preservation Research & Testing Division of the Library of Congress by William D. Storm. 1998.

No. 9807: Condition Survey of Motion Picture Holdings in the Library of Congress: Evaluation of Storage Environments for Motion Picture Collections
Report submitted under contract to the Preservation Research & Testing Division of the Library of Congress by James M. Reilly, Douglas W. Nishimura and Daniel Burge. 1998.

Revised Numbering Scheme

No. 9: Bibliography on the Preservation of Magnetic Media.
Gibson, Gerald D. February 2002.
Gibson has provided an extensive, annotated bibliography of citations from monographs, journals, conferences, technical reports, and other sources on the preservation of magnetic media. The work contains a comprehensive author, title and subject index.

No. 10: Compact Disc Service Life: An Investigation of the Estimated Service Life of Prerecorded Compact Discs. Chandru J. Shahani, Michele H. Youket, and Norman Weberg. Prepared for the Library of Congress by William P. Murray, Consultant, St. Paul, Minn. August 2004. This document is being revised.

No. 11: The Effects of Laser Engraving on the Estimated Service Life of Prerecorded Compacts Discs (CD-Rom). Chandru J. Shahani, Michele H. Youket, and Norman Weberg. Prepared for the Library of Congress by William P. Murray, Consultant, St. Paul, Minn. September 2004. This document is being revised.

Longevity of CD Media: Researach at the Library of Congress. Chandru J. Shahani, Basil Manns and Michelle Youket. December 2005.


Digitizing Visual Materials

The following publications were created for the Preservation Directorate of the Library of Congress. They provide technical guidelines and requirements for achieving digital image capture for preservation purposes.

Guidelines for Electronic Preservation of Visual Materials
Submitted by Picture Elements, Inc. 1995.
Report concludes that the choices to be made for digital image capture are collection, document, page, or even page-element dependent and that no single set of universal choices is appropriate. It offers a clear set of guidelines for making appropriate choices for a given document or collection.

Illustrated Book Study: Digital Conversion Requirements of Printed Illustrations

Submitted by Cornell University Library, Department of Preservation and Conservation and Picture Elements, Inc. July 1999
Report describes the best means for digitizing book illustrations, focusing on illustration processes prevalent in 19th and 20th century commercial publications. Procedures are developed to map different physical content regions to electronic content types. These mappings differ, based on the illustration type and on the need to preserve information at the essence, detail, or structure level of the illustration. A public domain utility which automatically detects the presence and location of a halftone region is also included.

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