Emagines

Emagines is since 2006 funded by the German Research Foundation project on electronic archiving of extensive and sometimes very old picture holdings of the German Archaeological Institute. These are digitized in a strategic long-term planning and will be made available worldwide by the German Archaeological Institute and the Center for Digital Archaeology ( CoDArchLab ) powered web database Arachne.

Background and objectives

We started the project in 2006 with glass negatives of the foreign departments of the DAI in Athens, Istanbul and Cairo ( Emagines1 ), in the second phase of the project in 2008 were added ( Emagines2 ) Negative from Rome, Madrid, and its headquarters in Berlin and Eurasia. These negatives include historical photographs, focusing on the ancient sculpture, topography and architecture, with some designs no longer or no longer exist in the then- held form. They are also acutely from the physical decay or destruction - eg due to environmental influences, natural disasters such as earthquakes, and not least by the manual use - threatened.

One goal of the project is therefore Emagines of the information contained in the stock glass negatives, the lasting digital preservation. In addition, through the provision of the negatives within the Arachne ( Database ) allows an overarching use of the material, which so far has been mainly prevented by the inhomogeneous documentation situation and the partial overlap of the material. The digitized image collections of the project remain the copyright property of the DAI and the Arachne Guest are therefore shown with the watermark of the DAI. The Internet presentation of the images also serves as a platform for an online ordering system, which is currently in the trial phase.

As part of the technical database processing supplied by the DAI text information to be optimized to the objects depicted on the negatives, for example by relevant recent research literature will be given. But not only the content but also technically the Arachne database has been changed to be the heterogeneous material of the project justice, which is generically, chronologically and culturally and historically spread extremely wide. For a number of these object groups therefore new data entry screens were developed to describe the central characteristics of the material in question can. For existing input masks enhancements and adjustments were necessary.

Work routine

In order not to endanger the sensitive stocks by long-distance transport, the glass negatives are scanned in simultaneous recording processes in each department of the DAI. From there, the scan will be sent to the FA, where they further digitally processed photographically and database technology as well as be of Cologne for the DAI long time stored on the SAN the university.

The research is a central complex documentation of the DAI is thus made ​​accessible web-based.

Data

Currently (week 51 in 2009) are about 84 298 glass negatives about Arachne queried, of which 44,000 belong to Emagines2. A fuzzy meta-search for the string ' Emagines ' leads to an overall view of over 48,000 object records of different categories, which are associated with Arachne in the glass negatives. In the so-called photo navigation above the 84 298 sets of image data can be queried, addressing the glass negative as such.

Left

  • Pdf presentation to EMAGINES the DAI Workshop in Berlin, 12/2009
  • Science and research in Germany
  • Publication of the German Archaeological Institute
  • Documentation
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Arachne (archaeological database)
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