Traversing the negative(s) space: a discussion of the challenges to providing digital access to archival negatives collections

Purpose This paper aims to highlight the tradeoffs inherent to facilitating digital access to archival collections of negatives. Photographic negatives pose major challenges to programmatic digitization and digital access. The American Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) digitization guidelines provide an aspirational standard for creating digital “preservation copies” of negatives, but strict adherence to the guidelines’ specifications poses major workflows and resource problems in practice. Design/methodology/approach An evaluation of two digitization case studies involving 199 glass plates and 400,000 35 mm negatives is based in comparison of final images’ adherence to the FADGI standards and an assessment of workflow efficiency against institutional project success and FADGI criteria. Findings These case studies illustrate the practical limitations to digitizing negatives to FADGI standards, particularly at scale. The FADGI star system, effective for digitizing documents, is less suited to negatives due to the absence of undergirding ISO standards and the variability of size, age, number and condition of the world’s negatives collections. Combined with extensive time and resource encumbrances and digital storage constraints, these factors justify an alternative or modified rating model for negatives. Institutions must balance resources and intended use when digitizing archival negatives. Research limitations/implications The technological and labor resources required to achieve FADGI 4-star digitization, digital access and digital preservation are significant, and not readily available to all institutions. Originality/value Authors present recommendations for refining FADGI to address its gaps so future versions better guide cultural heritage institutions toward pragmatic, holistic remediation of negatives collections. In practice, preservation standards must be balanced with institutional capacity and strategic priorities.