Digitizing Japanese prints

The National Museum of Ethnology in the Netherlands has an important
collection of Japanese prints dating from the 19th century. The
conservation department has been approached by the curators with the
request to scan this collection (using a flat bed scanner) to enable
digital publication and further research of these images.  The
reasons for proposing this method are that it is cheap, convenient
and can produce a relatively high resolution image.

Owing to the extremely light-fugitive nature of some of the organic
pigments used on these prints we would be very interested to hear of
any other museum's experience with flat bed scanners.  Are there
scanners specifically suited for archival or light-sensitive
materials and are there special procedures for their use?

    **** Moderator's comments: This topic has been discussed before
    (new postings on the topic are of course welcome)
    See especially Tim Vitale's post in Conservation DistList
    Instance 12:45 Wednesday, November 18, 1998 (this contains a
    link to his excellent article
    <URL:http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/
        diginews2-5.html#technical>
    The above URL has been wrapped for email. It should contain no
    newlines.

    Other items on the subject will be found under the topic "Effect
    of light on fine art materials" and

Fiona MacKinnon
Objects Conservator
National Museum of Ethnology
The Netherlands


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:22
               Distributed: Wednesday, September 5, 2001
                       Message Id: cdl-15-22-012
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