Digitisation / Cataloguing of non-textual objects: Photographic negatives. Infrastructure for indexing and digitising of historical photographs in art historical image libraries

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Bracht
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 203631055

Aim of the project is the exemplary digitisation and indexing of art historical documentation photographs from the early days of photography till the 1950s. For the first time, objects almost entirely canonical shown in excellent historical photographs by first-class authors will be digitised in high resolution, catalogued in detail in a database and published in the well-established image portal www.bildindex.de. The data produced will be made available to other portals like Europeana or Wikimedia by harvesting interface (see frame application). Besides applying the methods of object documentation well-proven in the Bildindex partner network, the photos will be catalogued in novel document types relating to photographic lots and to the single photo, thus allowing describing their belonging to larger collection contexts while making the photographic artefact itself the subject of analysis. The exceptionally high quality and the scientific rank of these early art historical documentary photographs is demonstrated by high-resolution digital images and detailed metadata modeled according to a new scheme.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Hubert Locher