virtualmuseum News

Digital cameras save artworks

Geoffrey Wirth — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 16:18:39 GMT

Digital imaging is revolutionising the way classical works of art are being preserved for future generations.

The National Gallery in London, UK, is leading the way in the use of this technology to make high quality digital reproductions of paintings.

For the past 10 years, it has been developing a system to monitor tiny changes in the artworks and build up a precise record of the colour of paintings to see if there are any changes over time.

The job has fallen to Vasari (Visual Art System for Archiving and Retrieval of Images), which uses what is called a colourimetric imaging system.

A special digital camera is used to capture each square metre of a painting's surface with a resolution of at least 10,000 by 10,000 pixels

"The kind of camera you would buy in a shop measures just red, green and blue," said Dr Saunders. "But this doesn't really provide us with enough information. So the present system uses seven colour bands, like the seven colours of the rainbow."

Source: BBC News

New W3C Recommendations: DOM & XML

Geoffrey Wirth — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 16:52:42 GMT

DOM Level 3 Core

With DOM Level 3 Core, software developers and script authors manipulate the content, structure and style of Web documents.

DOM Level 3 Load and Save

allows programs and scripts to load, serialize and filter document contents. Read the press release and visit the DOM home page.

Read the press release and visit the DOM home page.

XML Processing Model Requirements

The XML Processing Model and Language it outlines is an interoperable way for applications to describe the order in which processes should be applied to XML documents. Visit the XML home page.

xml:id Version 1.0

The XML Core Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of xml:id Version 1.0. The specification introduces a predefined attribute name that can always be treated as an ID and hence can always be recognized. Comments are welcome. Visit the XML home page.

Official network of European art museums

Geoffrey Wirth — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 13:58:54 GMT

euromuse.net is a public access portal giving accurate information on major exhibitions in European museums. It provides all vital information in one place, updated by the host museum; with euromuse.net you will never again be bogged down in proliferating individual websites and search engines. Each museum's information is available in the native language and in English. Updating of euromuse.net is continuous.

One touch color restauraton

Geoffrey Wirth — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:44:34 GMT

Epson offers an interesting feature in it's new scanners: automatic color resauration. The algorithms used certainly should be looked at carefully, but this could be a work-flow improvement for many digital archives.

NESTOR - Network of Expertise in Digital Preservation

Geoffrey Wirth — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 09:08:31 GMT

The main objective of the project is to create a network of expertise in long-term archiving and long-term availability of digital resources for Germany. As the perspective of current and future archive users is central to the project, the emphasis is put on the long-term availability of digital resources and not that much on pure preservation aspects.

The long-term goal is a permanent distributed infrastructure for long-term preservation and long-term accessibility of digital resources in Germany comparable e.g. to the Digital Preservation Coalition in the UK.