Digitisation Standards

This page outlines the standards applied by the UDS 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.

Contents

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

Photographic negatives and transparencies

  • Format: TIFF, 8 bit greyscale (BW) or 24bit colour (colour),
  • Resolution: 3200 dpi

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

Theses – Ph.D, Masters, Honours

  • File formats: TIFF (archive), PDF (delivery)
  • Documents with text or graphics for which colour is either not present or not essential
  • 300dpi, bi-tonal
  • Greyscale (8 bit) for pages with tonal images (e.g. BW photographs)
  • Documents where colour is present and is important, or for documents with low contrast (e.g. faded text, coloured background): 300dpi, 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.

References

The standards developed for the University Digitisation Service are based in part on the following standards :

Business Documents

Collections Material

File formats and metadata standards

File Formats

Document Metadata