Starting in 2006, the Museum of Anthropology implemented a program to create digital images of the 35,000 objects in their custody. Each day new racks of objects arrive in the Digitization Studio to be photographed. A team of photographers use state-of-the-art computers and digital cameras to capture each object from different angles.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. What does digitization mean?
A. Digitization is the process of converting analogue objects into digital data. In our case, we are photographing museum objects with digital cameras and creating digital image files.

2. What is an image archive?
A. An image archive is the name given to our ever-growing storage system of valuable digital image files. We keep all the Master Image files in the archive and make sure that they are protected throughout the long-term.

3. What is a Terabyte?
A. 1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte.
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte.
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte.
This means that the Museum currently stores 7.3 terabytes which is equal to 7,855,522,406 kilobytes!

4. How many objects are you photographing?
A. At the end of the project we will have photographed 35,000 objects.

Currently in digitization:

-Zuni Owls

-Melanesian Spears

A model canoe is set up to be photographed.

The view looking into the digitization studio.