The Visual Memory of Bavaria: Digitisation as a Tool to Conserve Collections of Historical Photographs
The picture archive of the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments was founded in 1887. It is one of the oldest institutional collections of photographs in Europe, and currently comprises more than 1.2 million historical photographs. The core collection of the archive consists of approx. 100.000 gelatine dry plates, so-called glass-plate negatives, and 75.000 albumin prints from the period before the First World War. The care for this photographic collection presents a huge conservation task for the future. To counteract the acute threat to the entire inventory, a method was developed in 2002 that allows the sensitive media to be digitised in a particularly gentle manner. The image information is acquired by an optical method that does not expose the materials to heat and pressure. In addition, the collection is stored in a specially conditioned photographic archive that is tailored to the requirements of the materials. The comparatively inexpensive in-house digitisation brings decisive benefits: "wandering" of the inventory to an external company is avoided and the originals no longer need to be frequently accessed. The ultimate objective is the integration of the digital data into an open information management system.
31.08. - 09.09.06 | daily 09.00-16.00
Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Hofgraben 4, 80539 München, see site map 05
