L. Leht

Consequences of Changes in Interior Climate in the Exposition of the Estonian Open Air Museum

The National Archives of Estonia gained approval for six digitization projects in the end of 2009, funded by Estonian EU structural IT-funds. Activities of the projects last from 2010 to 2012. Projects deal with different kinds of archival materials, all of them concentrating on different types of carriers: photonegatives, parchments, videos, maps, nitride-base films and paper records. In all of the projects, some conservation actions are done in the preparatory phase before actual scanning of documents. In the projects that deal with maps and parchments, conservation activities are being carried out by the digitization service providers under the control of the Archives’ preservation specialists. In the projects of photonegatives, paper records, videos and nitride-base films, all of the conservation is done by the National Archives’ own employees before handing archival materials over to the service providers for digitization. This paper describes the principles that are used and activities that are carried out in the preparation phase and conservation of archival materials before digitization in these projects.

The paper also gives an overview of the selection criteria of the archival materials for the projects. Digital preservation formats of the digitized files are described and long-term digital preservation principles presented. The paper is written and presented from the point of view of practical digital preservation and digitization giving conservation a so-called neutral outsider’s look.