Hoi, Remember the archive of Cologne? It collapsed. When we have as a policy to have the exact files on Commons as provided by a GLAM, we prove provenance because our best practice is to include the material in our archive as provided by a GLAM. When we decide for all kinds of reasons to transcode it to another format we can and should when it makes sense. It makes sense as long as we keep the original.
Your point that we do not need to have the original copy is wrong. Keeping the original files as a best practice and an important practice was confirmed in all the dealings I have had with many GLAMS. Thanks, GerardM
2009/9/13 John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com
On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, John you are right. TIFF can be everything you describe. The question I
am
left with what is your point to this? Material is scanned without compression by GLAM, we get it per standard as TIFF files, we restore
them.
When the material is compressed, we do not restore them. We need to
retain
the original to demonstrate provenance. It is problematic to have files nobody can see in a standard way. This is why we need TIFF support,
because
otherwise we are likely find an admin who starts deleting this essential material.
My point is that we *can* _losslessly_ transcode TIFF files to PNG/MNG.
Provenance requires that we know where the original digitised copy is (an identifier), but we don't need to have a copy of the original TIFF if we have an PNG with the same quality.
TIFF support means we don't need to worry about transcoding, or have fights about TIFF vs PNG vs PDF/A. That will be good, as it is a hurdle with working GLAMs, but it is not preventing high quality images or working with GLAMs, as transcoding is not a difficult process.
The main problem at the moment is the upload limit.
-- John Vandenberg
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