Digitalization of Glass Negatives of the German Archaeological Institut as a Part of "Emagines"

The DAI owns the worldwide largest and oldest image holdings in the field of Archaeology of the Mediterranean because of its research tradition. They were meant to be digitalized strategically for the long term as a part of the project “Emagines”. The German Archaeological Institute and the research archive for ancient plastic make them accessible worldwide through the web-database ARACHNE.

Especially the oldest and historically valuable records are threatened by loss: by environmental events, natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and manual use. Users of today have to research the holdings in the respective photoarchives of the DAI-foreign departments in Athens and Istanbul and thus put a strain the material. Aside from those important conservational problems, the deficits in the recording of the negative holdings are obvious. The schemes of classification of the photo library cannot replace a structure by content. The potential that can be found in the glass negatives of the DAI has to be regarded as endangered but also as unusable.

Link: Database

Supervision: Prof. Dr. Ortwin Dally, Prof. Dr. Reinhard Förtsch

Cooperation: German Archaeological Institute (DAI)

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)