A recent Barron’s blog post featured quotes from Chicago Albumen Works’ Director Doug Munson.
“Families that have approached us for digitization had private collections that have been passed down from the 19th and 20th century, and now there are three generations of people who are interested.” These families, Munson said, subsequently used digital images to create facsimile albums, scrapbooks and reproductions. “In addition, private collectors can enhance the value of their collections before a donation is made, to relieve the museums or historical societies of digitizing expenses,” he said.
In other words, increase awareness of your private collection, through making digital images available to the public, and the value of your collection should rise. Working exclusively with flat objects, particularly photographs, Housatonic, Mass.-based Albumen Works takes pride in working under the rules of museum-quality conservation. Munson said that the ubiquity of scanners has been an unfortunate fact for digitization. “It feels like you can push a button and that photo is magically on-screen,” Munson says. Furthermore, digitization a decade ago was inferior, mostly because industry standards hadn’t yet been developed.
Read the full article by Crystal Kim here:
http://blogs.barrons.com/penta/2014/02/07/digitizing-art-collections/
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