Digitisation Standards
This page outlines the standards applied by the UDC in digitising particular groups of materials. The standards for collection material are largely based on the standards employed by the National Library of Australia and the Library of Congress, however there are some minor differences. Where these occur, issues of practicality or quality will pertain. In some instances our standards exceed those of other institutions.
Business documents
Comply with Public Records Office of Victoria – Digital Capture Standard
Documents with text or graphics for which colour is either not present or not essential
- 300dpi, bi-tonal, format PDF or multi-page TIFF
- Provide OCR for PDF searchability wherever practical
Documents where colour is present and is important, or for documents with low contrast (e.g. faded text, coloured background)
- 300dpi, 24 bit colour, format PDF or multi-page TIFF
- Provide OCR for PDF searchability wherever practical
Books from the Collections
- Format: single page TIFF (preservation), PDF, TIFF or JPEG (access)
- Minimum 300dpi; 24 Bit colour
- Provide OCR for PDF searchability wherever practical
- Capture covers, spine and all pages wherever possible
- Capture the entire page wherever practical
In cases where fine detail exceeds the limitation of 300dpi, or when fine detail is deemed to be of significance to the item, endeavour to capture at 600dpi irrespective of the object size.
Photographs
- Format: TIFF, 8 bit greyscale (BW photographs) or 24bit colour (colour photographs),
- Resolution
- Larger than A5 minimum 300dpi
- Smaller than A5, minimum 600dpi
Typical exceptions
- Where colour is significant to record the condition of BW photographs, increase to 24 bit colour
- Where photographs are very faded or very dark, increase bit depth to 16 bits per channel (16 bit greyscale or 48bit colour) to facilitate image restoration.
- Enlargements and contact prints derived from large format negatives may have sufficient resolution to warrant resolution to a minimum of 600dpi
- Resolution may increase to meet specific requests for reproduction
Photographic negatives and transparencies
- Formats:
- DNG where digitised with a DSLR
- TIFF, 16 bit greyscale (BW) or 24bit colour (colour)
- Resolution: ~3800 dpi (Varies slightly depending on the device used to digitise)
Typical exceptions
- Where photographs are very faded or very dark, increase bit depth to 16 bits per channel (16 bit greyscale or 48bit colour) to facilitate image restoration.
Maps and Posters
Format: Single page TIFF, 24 bit colour
Resolution: Minimum 300dpi, increase to 600dpi if sufficient fine detail is required on the advice of the collection manager.
- Posters: 300dpi minimum
- Maps and artworks: 600dpi
- Aerial photographs: 1200dpi, 16bit greyscale for BW
Theses – Ph.D, Masters, Honours
- File formats: TIFF (archive), PDF (delivery)
- Resolution: 300dpi
- Colour
- Documents with text or graphics for which colour is either not present or not essential: bi-tonal
- Greyscale (8 bit) for pages with tonal images (e.g. BW photographs)
- Greyscale (8 bit) for pages with faint text to maintain legibility (e.g. faded typewritten documents)
- Documents where colour is present and is important, or for documents with low contrast (e.g. faded text, coloured background): 24 bit colour
These standards should be applied to maximise readability and minimise file size, so the use of an appropriate combination of bi-tonal, greyscale & colour within a thesis is recommended wherever practical.
Additional Data
Additional data where present is stored in a ZIP file. A subfolder is created for each media item. Audio-visual material is converted to a more accessible format.
- Video: MP4 (H264)
- Audio: MP3
- Data: Copied from discs
References
The standards developed for the University Digitisation Centre are based in part on the following standards :
Business Documents
Collections Material
File formats and metadata standards
File Formats
- Digital Negative (DNG)
"a publicly available archival format for the raw files generated by digital cameras"