Preservation Department

 Digital and Reformatting Basics

Digital files can be created to reduce use of, or in some cases replace, a deteriorating or vulnerable original provided that the digital files offer accurate and trusted surrogates (TDO). Preservation of the digital files themselves is best served when digital images are captured consistently, capture methods are well documented, and widely supported file formats are used.

It is cost-effective to produce sufficiently high-level images to avoid the expense of reconverting when technology requires or can use a richer digital file.  This point is particularly significant since the expense of identifying, preparing, inspecting, and indexing digital information far exceeds scanning costs. 

The high-quality master or archive file that's created can also be used to create derivatives files, which meet a variety of current and future users’ needs.  The quality, utility, and expense of derivatives for publication, image display, and computer processing are directly affected by the quality of the initial scan.