Determine the minimum quality needed, but aim for the highest affordable

Quality in digitisation of cultural heritage depends on many things. It is not only about capture accuracy and resolution, but also about other key aspects such as historical accuracy, range of data and metadata generated and collected, and fitness for purpose. Investigate how high the capture accuracy and resolution could be, what the costs are (in time and money), and the equipment, software and skills needed. Determine what the minimum quality necessary is for the target users and the way they use the content, and whether the project budget and timescale permit capturing at a higher level of accuracy. Aim for the highest capture quality for the largest number of assets that the budget and time available allow.

What is high quality today may become just standard in the near future, and high-accuracy and high-resolution raw data may be useful in the future to generate new, better digital representations. This is especially true for 3D models. Collect, generate and include rich metadata and annotations throughout the workflow (during digitisation, processing, visualising). When outsourcing, specify from the beginning what the quality requirements are, which rights apply, and what data in which formats the external provider has to deliver. Keep in mind that, regardless of how high the quality of digitisation, a digitised object can never substitute the original one.

Read more about quality aspects in the following chapters.