Creating digital content

This page includes guidance about technologies and standards for museums, libraries, archives, and other organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand who are digitising their collections.

How do I create a digital copy of an analogue item?

If your business or project depends on having content that can be used over a reasonable period of time, you need to anticipate that some technologies and standards will become obsolete. When looking for good or best practice, refer to guidance that is current and addresses recent developments. To achieve this, look for technology hardware and software that uses open standards and for guidance that is being maintained and has been updated within the last three years.

Because of the different media and content types involved, we have split this guide into sections:

Each section provides an overview of the kind of technology involved and the approach to practice and minimum standards we recommend.

What are open standards?

Minimum characteristics of open standards

There is no one definition of what makes a standard ‘open’. As a minimum, we recommend that digital content creators and managers look for software, hardware, schemes, and formats that have the following three open characteristics:

The description and specification for the standard is publicly documented and available.
The standard can be implemented or used free of any royalties, contracts, or patent licence fees.
The standard is in common or mainstream use, including by organisations with long-standing reputations.

These characteristics require more than just popular use. For example, Microsoft’s Word .doc format and Fraunhofer’s .mp3 format are both proprietary format standards despite their popularity (while the less popular OpenDocument format and Ogg Vorbis format are open format standards). While the TIFF image format is owned by Adobe Systems Incorporated, it is publicly documented, free of royalties and in common use, giving it a sufficient degree of openness for it to be recommended.

Ideal characteristics of open standards

In addition to the above minimum characteristics, open standards are ideally:

in common or mainstream use in multiple countries
endorsed or approved by a formal standards body (e.g. ISO, W3C)
issued and maintained by a non-profit body independent of commercial or pecuniary interests
developed and agreed by a consensus of interested parties.

In practice, it can take many years for open standards to emerge that have all of the ideal characteristics, and even longer for them to be supported in software and hardware. Furthermore, as patents expire, some published proprietary standards can effectively become open.

In the Make it Digital guides, we have focused on identifying standards that meet the minimum characteristics of openness described above. In some cases however, it will be difficult or impossible to follow an open standard. Good documentation and common use — often characteristics of ‘industry’ standards — may then have to be a necessary compromise until an open standard emerges.

Disclaimer: We believe the information in this guide on this page is accurate, but it does not constitute legal advice and DigitalNZ is not responsible for loss or damage caused as a result of following it.

Creating digital content

How do I create a digital copy of an analogue item?

What are open standards?

Minimum characteristics of open standards

Ideal characteristics of open standards

Further reading and useful links

Digital format standards

Resolution and file-size calculators

New Zealand resources

International resources

Recommended reading and viewing