Recently published by the Primary Resource Group Inc., The Survey of Academic Library & Museum Efforts to Digitize Film Collections (ISBN 978-157440-692-4) compiles data and information regarding film digitization. This information is useful for any university, museum, archive, or library that is undergoing the process of digitization or looking for a place to start.
The survey includes information from 23 institutions involved in digitization. It includes data regarding how much these institutions have digitized and how much they plan to move forward with. The report also answers logistical questions regarding outsourcing and the prospect of hiring film digitization employees. In addition to statistics, the report also includes helpful advice from digitization experts.
Some of this advice explores the physical services of digitization, including the need for mold removal, colorization, film cleaning, restoration, film baking, and sound synchronization. The report also reviews revenue producing activities of the survey respondents.
The report organizes data by film type, including 16mm, Super 8, 35mm, and 28mm. It also organizes information regarding resolution sampling schemes and data file compression types, such as API, Flash, Motion JPEG 2000, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2, MPEG-4, QuickTime, and Windows Media Video.
The Survey of Academic Library & Museum Efforts to Digitize Film Collections takes a closer look at the Copyright Exceptions for Libraries and Archives expressed in Section 108. This section of the U.S. Copyright Act authorizes libraries and archives to distribute some copyrighted works for the purpose of research and preservation. However, the digital age has made the parameters of this exception become unclear. The survey finds that 66.77% of respondents had digitized film and been protected by the Exemption 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act.
Some of the other findings made by the report include:
A plurality of 43.48% of respondents felt that staff labor spent on digitization would increase in the next two years.
The average number of hours of film digitized over the past year for the overall sample was 157.12.
More than 26% of respondents needed to digitize Super 8 film formats.
Find more information including a table of contents, list of participating institutions, and the questionnaire here.