Enhanced Education for Better Imaging Practices: A Case Study at the University of Michigan

Abstract

Recent notable efforts to establish new technical standards and best practices for digital imaging, including the Federal Agency Digitization Guidelines Initiative in the United States and the Metamorfoze effort in the Netherlands, present important educational challenges and perhaps one of the biggest opportunities for the imaging science community to increase the level of imaging literacy in the ranks of new and upcoming cultural heritage professionals. This paper establishes the contexts for and presents the preliminary results of an educational exercise on digitization quality carried out in collaboration between academia and industry. A graduate level course introduces students to emerging standards and best practices and reinforces this information with training in the use of the GoldenThread image quality software via a server-based “virtual laboratory” environment. Recognizing that improvements in teaching imaging concepts are also needed, we present examples from an image quality interpretation manual developed to complement classroom discussion and laboratory exercises.