September 2003

With apologies for cross-posting.

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Changing images
The role of photographic collections in the digital age

An international SEPIA conference at the
Finnish Museum of Photography
Helsinki
18-20 September 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
<http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia>.
The results of the SEPIA project will be
presented at the conference.

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 Mäkelä (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 supérieure Louis Lumière) to be confirmed
Margaret Graham (Institute for Image Data Research)
Wolfgang Hesse (Rundbrief Fotografie)
Erkki Huhtamo (UCLA) to be confirmed
Eero Hyvönen (University of Helsinki)
Torsten Johansson (Stockholm City Museum)
Martin Jürgens (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 language will be English.

Venue
The Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1G, Helsinki, Finland

Costs and registration
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
http://www.knaw.nl/cfdata/conference/conference_entryform.cfm

The conference website can be found at
http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia/conference.html

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

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
tel. ++31 - 20 - 551 08 39 fax ++31 - 20 - 620 49 41
URL: http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/

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