"Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials" by the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI)
Description
Digitisation is not simply a matter of taking photographs; it is a comprehensive process for creating high-quality digital images that can be reliably accessed and effectively used by a wide range of researchers. As libraries continue to undertake digitisation programmes of their manuscripts and other collections, the need for recognised and standardised guidelines has become increasingly important to ensure consistent and reliable results. This document provides a useful resource for those working in cultural heritage preservation, helping them understand the fundamental principles and practices involved in digitising heritage materials, including manuscripts, paintings, films, and other forms of cultural heritage.
The Qirab Project recognised the importance of translating the “Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials”, issued by the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), into Arabic. The goal here is to provide a resource that would support Arab libraries in planning their digitisation programmes and encourage the adoption of better practices in both digitisation and digital preservation.
“The FADGI conformance program relies upon well-established practices, objective measurements, and quality assurance methods to create accurate imaging. The Program aims to reduce equipment variability, image artifacts, and other defects introduced by the scanning process and human subjectivity. To be considered FADGI compliant, a digital imaging process must implement a digital imaging conformance evaluation program, and compliance should be demonstrated in project documentation or metadata.”
FADGI Star System
The FADGI Star System is a framework developed by the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) to define and assess the technical quality of digitised cultural heritage materials. The system uses a scale of one to four stars, with higher star levels indicating increasingly stringent requirements for image quality, accuracy, and consistency. It considers factors such as resolution, colour accuracy, tonal response, and image uniformity, helping institutions establish an appropriate quality target for different digitisation projects.
The aim of the system is not for every digitisation project to achieve four stars, but rather for each project to identify a realistic and achievable star level based on its available budget, human resources, and technical capabilities. In this way, the FADGI Star System helps institutions set clear, measurable, and realistic quality targets while taking into account the practical constraints of each digitisation project.
Download
The document is now available on Qirab’s website for free in PDF format for all Arabic-speaking users. Click here to download the file.
License
The “Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials” (Third Edition) are Copyright © 2023 by the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI). This work is available for worldwide use and reuse under CC0 1.0 Universal.