The Special Collections Digital Program at the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries produces two sets of images in the digitization process: archival masters and derivative images.

Imaging Standards for Archival Masters

• By default, materials are scanned at 24-bit depth (RGB-millions of colors). Photographs and other materials with no color information may be scanned at 8-bit depth (256 shades of gray).
• By default, materials are scanned at 600 dpi to create a digital master.
• No restoration or other digital enhancements are performed on digital masters, except those necessary to match the appearance of the original materials.
• Digital master files are saved in uncompressed TIFF format.
• Digital masters are archived on DVDs, hard drives, and magnetic tape.

Imaging Standards for Derivative Images

• Derivative images are provided for Internet transfer and public use. Further derivatives may be produced if evaluation of the materials shows the need.
• Digital "submasters" are created of badly damaged materials through digital restoration in order to improve the usability of the materials. Materials will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine if restoration is needed.
• In cases where materials are digitally restored, users will also be provided with a non-restored image, in order to give the user some idea of the condition of the original materials.
• Currently, our access files are primarily intended for screen display. To that end, 8-bit grayscale/24-bit color is used and digital images are resized to 600 pixels across the shortest dimension, 72 dpi, and saved in a JPEG format. Materials that are primarily textual are saved in XML or HTML format.

Revision date: July 30, 2003