Dear all,
First of all, thank you so much for all your answers which were extremely
valuable and very helpful. Thank you very much.
This is just a quick summary of all (numerous, I have to say) answers.
It was felt that the TIF format was more solidly established, more reliable and
lossless (this is the key) and although it is under the Adobe umbrella, it offers
more flexibility than PDF.
Also, due to the nature of the collection, we are very focused on preserving
high quality masters, it appears that PDF would not be a suitable format.
The decision has been made that the files will be scanned as TIFs and it is
now envisaged that surrogates will be created from these TIF files and (low
compression) Jpeg (Jpeg2000 was the one to watch) or Djvu formats will be
used for Web release. Because they are goverment files, they will be scanned
at 300dpi and not 600 (we do not need that amount of detail, and due to the
sheer amount of files, it would not make sense). Obviously if your project is all
about access, the priority would be different.
When it comes to mass data storage, I guess there are different solutions for
different projects. LTO was not the favoured medium by a few of you and I
can understand. Yet, it has been proved to be a good support for deep
archiving.
I am lucky to work in a military environment and their IT team is excellent.
HDDs were already considered as well and we have bought 2x1TB. One was
dodgy.....not a good start!
It may be the case that our PM (probably LZW compressed) will be stored on
LTO tapes AND on an off-site server, while Jpegs may be stored on our local
server and/or onto HDDs for easy retrieval....thats just an example!
We are now entering the pilot project phase and I guess that the daily
workflow of our team will help making a decision regarding storage and backup
(location and frequency).
I think this is it. Please feel free to email me if I forgot something. Would it
help if I was to circulate an update later in the year on what worked and what
didnt??
Again, a big thanks to you all,
Cecile
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