Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007.

This thesis is performed as a case study, and has had the aim to study who has the power over cultural heritage, by studying the digitization selection criteria at KB and what influences there can be on the digitization selection process. The theory of the arm’s length principle, (Mangset, Kunst og makt, 2013) the professional model, (Rothstein, 2010), that digitization re-shape and re-contextualize cultural heritage material, (Dahlström et al. 2013), and different concepts will influence the digitization selection process has been used in this study. A qualitative research with document study and informant interview and e-mail interview has been conducted. The documents that were studied are related to legislation documents from the responsible authorities of KB; Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education and Research as well as the present and former internal digitization strategies at KB. Informant interviews and e-mail interviews has been performed with management and staff at KB to examine influences in the digitization selection process at KB. The empirical material was analyzed using a qualitative content analysis method. The study concluded that the digitization selection criteria is build around the commission for KB and that access and preservation are key factors to consider for KB. The study also concludes that government, KB management and KB staff all have got influence and power over cultural heritage as has the different criteria as; the material itself and copyright issues. Another conclusion was that the government rules over cultural heritage held at KB on an arm’s length distance. / Program: Masterprogram: Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap, Digitala bibliotek och informationstjänster

The purpose of this thesis is to compare mass digitization and qualitative digitization, to see how the digitization process and the digitalized material differ. The study emanates from the mass digitization as it is performed at the National Library in Norway, and the qualitative digitization at the Royal Library in Sweden. The method used is document studies combined with mail interviews. The focus is upon the practical operation, to which counts: “purpose & selection”, “preparation, image capturing and processing”, “metadata & text encoding”, “quality assessment”, “storage of digital originals and copies” and “display”. The result showed that the mass digitization automatize the process as far as possible and uses uniform methods of whole collections. They have minimal preparation, processing and quality controls, if it doesn’t make the digitization quicker. During qualitative digitization the most parts are done manually, where every moment and object is prepared, processed and controlled considering what is best for the original. The result of the product of digitization – the digital documents – showed that qualitative digitization prefers aspects like caution and security, as they among other things uses the well established file format TIFF, and uses sufficiently high quality in methods to preserve all information from analogue documents, and store both processed and unprocessed versions of the digitization. Mass digitization is more insecure as they use the non-established file format JPEG2000, and the digital master is processed, compressed (lossless) and cut.

This thesis presents a study aiming to identify the selection criteria for the digitization of posters at the National Library of Sweden (Kungl. biblioteket). The theory is that cultural heritage institutions are empowered to decide how our cultural heritage is presented as they select what items (or, as in this study, posters) will be digitized. The poster is studied as it is an interesting media form which historically was an important means of communication. The poster can represent and reflect historical events and opinions in society. The posters chosen to be digitized, will represent a part of our cultural heritage as presented on the internet. The research questions are to find out the purpose of digitization, to identify the selection criteria, why the collection of posters is digitized, which posters have been chosen and what were the selections criteria. The study aims to compare principles with practice. Selection policy documents are studied and the poster collection is studied in documents, on the internet and by interviewing representatives at the National Library of Sweden. The conclusion is that although the policy documents are indeed thorough regarding detailed selection criteria, it is actually practical reasons (such as available resources) that finally decide what material is digitized. The situation that the cultural heritage institutions are constructing our visual cultural heritage is probably unavoidable, but the problem is that if choices are not made on the correct grounds, this will have the consequence that the presentation of our cultural heritage will not be representative. / Uppsatsnivå: D