Genus and Zeutschel were very pleased to host a Digitisation and Standards Quality Management Conference at the Wellcome Trust on Tuesday 13th June 2023. Many thanks to Richard Everett and the Wellcome digitisation team Home | Wellcome for hosting us and providing a superb tour of the behind-the-scenes digitisation work of the Wellcome Trust.
This conference followed up on our inaugural event on April 4th 2019 at the National Gallery. The plan was to host more events but, unfortunately, COVID delayed our efforts by a few years. Now we are hoping to restart a series of such events. The Wellcome Trust event was our first post COVID quality event and as such it was by invitation only. We are planning on subsequent open invite events, with the next one sometime in October 2023. If you have an interest to attend then please contact us and we will provide full details later.
The main presentation of the day was from Alexander Sander from Zeutschel, who explained the “Why?, What? and How?” of digitisation standards. Alexander explained how a simple human interpretation of quality can not be accepted and that all images captured must be measured against international standards to ensure their quality. He then went on to explain the subtle differences between the FADGI, Metamorfoze and ISO 19264-1:2021 standards and the very recent changes to those standards. Alexander then explained what the standards measure, including Modular Transfer Function, Tone Reproduction, Gain Modulation, White Balance, Noise, Dynamic Range, Colour, Channel Registration, Illumination and Geometry. By using the Zeutschel QM Tool (and other tools) you can measure how your digitised images compare against whatever levels of the standards that you are intending to achieve. The QM Tool uses a simple dashboard system to display what results were achieved, after scanning your test targets and white balance sheets. In addition, by using the Zeutschel Omniscan software you can also set up a seamless quality workflow system, that gives a digital certificate for each image, confirming the quality level achieved – ideal for confirmed quality assurance and image throughput.
After Alexander’s presentation we were joined online for a Q&A session by Volker Jansen, who is the Technical Director of Zeutschel and a member of the ISO committee TC42 JWG26. Volker is recognised as an international expert on digitisation standards. His answers to a number of questions from the floor were very insightful.
We were then very lucky to have a short talk from Billy Mahoney of the National Archives and a superb presentation from his colleague, Andre Santos, who explained how they digitise and measure quality. It was very useful for the attendees to see how quality is achieved and measured in the real world, by an organisation of the standing of the National Archives.
After a buffet lunch and a live demonstration of the high standards attained on the brand new Zeutschel OS-A we then had a very interesting tour of the Wellcome Digitisation studios and displays.
Many thanks to Richard and the team, Alexander, Volker, Billy and Andre, plus all of the attendees. If you would like to be invited to our next Quality event, then please contact Hayley Kilmurry at hayleykilmurry@genusit.com No venue or date has been set yet but we will let you know in the next few weeks. We are currently gauging interest by building a list of interested parties.
Comments are closed.