Managing A Quality Digitization Practice in Cultural Heritage Institutions: Statistical Quality Control Tools and Techniques

Abstract

The appearance of user-friendly, scientifically informative, standards-based digital imaging targets within the Cultural Heritage community presents opportunities for establishing achievable and verifiable image capture specifications, for streamlining digitization hardware selection and optimal use, and for monitoring critical steps in digital imaging workflows. The success of these standards based quality control tools and procedures will require appropriate selection and adoption, in concert with a serious commitment on the part of management to their use.Crucial to this adoption effort is understanding the role that similar techniques have long played in those professional-level analog imaging and film processing facilities that were organizationally or physically set apart – “Black Boxed” – from the Cultural Heritage institutions that utilized their services and received their products. In this paper, we propose that Cultural Heritage institutions move to adopt industry standard statistical process control and quality improvement language, tools, and procedures. We propose this with some urgency because less rigorous and less effective quality measurement, monitoring, and process control & improvement procedures are currently being adopted by or developed in Cultural Heritage digital imaging and archiving facilities.