Processing of Documents and Digitization of Photographs from Nikola Tesla's Personal Fund

Ivana Zorić

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 15 (2009) no. 1.

Résumé

The work presents methods and results of processing and digitization of Tesla`s photographs undertaken in order to systematize the data they’re containing in the best possible way, as well as to provide them protection and make them available to the wider circuit of users. Due to specific and unique nature of materials, techniques and various templates, although registered as archive subject matter, photo materials from Nikola Tesla`s Personal fund presents, according to many parameters, an individual group and demand a special treatment in means of description and preservation. This task is highly important, especially considering that UNESCO has, in 2003, enlisted Tesla`s Archives into the register “Memory of the World”, which is the highest form of preserving the cultural heritage. The project of digitization considered choosing the methods of digitization, hardware support, digital formats, data storage media and ways of protection of digital data, as well as creating a relation database organized in such manner to make it possible to explicitly identify, locate, label and describe each photograph, but also to record data of its museum “life”. The computer application Tesla_Photo has been produced, made in order to enable an efficient search of all available digital records and information on photographs, as well as efficient realization, recording, filing and tracking of external and internal demands for the use of the materials. Objective point of the processes of digitization in the Nikola Tesla Museum, apart from protecting of the materials, is to make a unique information system to join all museum collections.