1. Photodocumentation



We use a Nikon 35mm camera with a Micro-Nikkor 60mm flat-field lens.  We

shoot Kodachrome 25, the archival standard for fine resolution and image

stability. The posters are held in place on a wall-mounted matte black

vaccuum board, assuring flatness without damage to the posters.  Lighting

is provided by a pair of Lumedyne 200 watt-second electronic strobe units

placed  45 to the copyboard.  A strobemeter is used to assure even light

balance over the image area.  This setup provides image resolution of 55-60

line-pairs/mm.





2. Digitizing and electronic indexing



Slides are scanned onto Kodak Master CD disks, which compresses and stores

the full-color images at 5 levels of resolution, from 128x192 pixels (96 KB

file) to 2048x3072 pixels (24MB file).  Each CD holds approximately 100

images.  Kodak claims that 95% of their CD's will have a data lifetime of

greater than 200 years if stored in  the dark at 25 C, 40% relative

humidity, about half that under standard office conditions.



The CD scans  are of sufficient quality that they can be exported to an

image manipulation program (we use Photoshop) and can be output on a

large-size color plotter to produce very good duplicate display copies.



Scanned images are dropped into an image database management system 

we currently favor Extensis Portfolio), which allows cataloging

and retrieval.  Search fields are set up for the electronic catalog,

including artist, date, agency, original catalog number, new catalog

number, medium, size, description, caption, condition, and source.  The

program allows compound searches based on all of the above information, and

shows the images selected as thumbnails on-screen.  The source CD can also

be identified, and if installed, the full-size image can be pulled up on

screen.



The catalog is set up on a Mac-based platform, but can be translated to others .

The data can be easily exported to any one of a number of spreadsheets or

databases.