Project in progress (September 2013 – August 2014)
Total amount for the task: 506,790 pln

The project was aimed at the digitization of the unique collection of photographic glass negatives from the Małopolska museums and popularizing them online in order to enable our e-visitors to take a trip back in time – to places and people – and to bring the protagonists of glass negatives back from oblivion.

Three institutions which possess collections of glass negatives and which expressed their willingness to support the Museum in implementing the activities by signing the “Agreement on cooperation in the Project” were invited by the Museum to cooperate. The project involved preparing the objects in terms of conservation in order to remove – before the digitization – all defects visible on transparent media which may cause the risk of flaws on the digital image. The photographic plates are preserved in special protective packaging with a neutral pH.

The digitization covered 2,000 historical glass plates which were selected by the partner institutions as exceptionally valuable due to their high documentary, historical and iconographic value. The image content of the negatives was analysed in the inventory and popular-scientific descriptions in order to make them available online for the first time on the websites of the institutions and the “Digital Cultural Heritage” Internet platform.

The method of digitization and the equipment parameters were selected on the basis of the special nature of objects subjected to digitization, as well as the size of this collection, bearing in mind the detailed analysis of the solutions functioning on the market, as well as good practices of domestic and foreign cultural institutions (including the MOMA, Morgan Museum, the Library of Congress in the USA) .