Conference on photographic collections

Changing images: The role of photographic collections in the digital
age
An international SEPIA conference at the Finnish Museum of
Photography, Helsinki
Venue: The Cable Factory,  Tallberginkatu 1G, Helsinki, Finland
<URL:http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia/conference.html>
September 18-20, 2003

The Finnish Museum of Photography will be hosting this conference as
part of the project Safeguarding European Photographic Images for
Access (SEPIA) funded under the European Union's Culture 2000
Programme. In this project 19 institutions in 11 countries cooperate
on several aspects relating to preservation and digitization of
(historical) photographic collections that are an essential part of
the European cultural heritage <URL:http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia>.
The results of the SEPIA project will be presented at the
conference. The conference language will be English.

The conference's aim will be to bring together a wide audience of
professionals from archives, museums, libraries and the commercial
sector who are responsible for management of photographic
collections, and experts in photography and digital imaging. The
focus will be on management of photographic collections, the
possibilities for increasing access to the photographic heritage,
and problems of preservation (of photographs as well as digital
collections). The orientation of the conference will be towards
application of new technology, with an emphasis on projects that
have explored solutions for issues like scanning requirements,
descriptions, searching and metadata, user requirements,
inter-operability, digital asset management, financial and
organizational aspects, exploitation of collections, copyright etc.

The conference will pay attention to the role of heritage
institutions, which is at the moment undergoing a change in that
public access, also through digitization, and the use of collections
are becoming more and more important factors and affect management
and budgeting. Institutions have to find a way to reconcile
traditional functions with these new roles. It will be explored how
use changes as a result of digitization and which effects this has
on use and preservation of originals. To what extent digitization
contributes to commercial use of photographs for multimedia
applications and to use for educational purposes and by (amateur)
researchers will be other topics for discussion.

The conference will look at issues like:

    digital preservation
    scanning requirements
    searching and descriptive models
    requirements of different user groups
    preservation of originals in relation to digitization
    workflow, costs, organizational issues, training
    business models
    ethical issues and rights

Speakers will be experts from Europe and the USA. Apart from plenary
papers, there will be parallel sessions focusing on a specific
aspect like:

    descriptive models
    (permanence of) digital prints
    migration process in practice
    scanning quality.

Among the speakers:

    Asko Makela
    Finnish Museum of Photography (keynote address)

    Trond Bjorli
    Norwegian Museum of Cultural History

    Gigliola Fioravanti
    Centro di Fotoriproduzione Legatoria e Restauro degli Archivi di
    Stato

    Jean Marc Fontaine
    Laboratoire d'Acoustique Musicale

    Franziska Frey
    Rochester Institute of Technology

    Jean-Paul Gandolfo
    Ecole national superieure Louis Lumiere (to be confirmed)

    Margaret Graham
    Institute for Image Data Research

    Wolfgang Hesse
    Rundbrief Fotografie

    Erkki Huhtamo
    UCLA (to be confirmed)

    Eero Hyvonen
    University of Helsinki

    Torsten Johansson
    Stockholm City Museum

    Martin Jurgens
    Independent consultant

    Aira Laitinen
    Lehtikuva

    Yola de Lusenet
    European Commission on Preservation and Access

    James Stevenson
    Victoria and Albert Museum

    Simon Tanner
    Higher Education Digitisation Service

    Douwe Zeldenrust
    Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services (NIWI)

The conference fee will be 195 euros; this includes coffees, teas,
and lunches, plus a reception. Reduced fees of 150 euros are
available for staff of ECPA contributors and ECPA subscribers.
Please use the electronic registration form at
<URL:http://www.knaw.nl/cfdata/conference/conference_entryform.cfm>

Main sponsor:
    The Cable Factory, Kaapeli
    Member of Trans Europe Halles

Yola de Lusenet
European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA)
P.O. Box 19121, NL-1000 GC  Amsterdam,
visiting address: c/o KNAW, Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29,
NL-1011 JV  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
+31 20 551 08 39
Fax: +31 20 620 49 41


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:75
                  Distributed: Thursday, May 29, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-75-010
                                  ***