Last week Valentina and Clarissa presented PHOTO-Lit at the ECHIC Conference “Equip and Engage. Research and Dissemination Infrastructures for the Humanities”.
The title of the presentation was “PHOTO-Lit: Opportunities and issues of digitizing the Belgian photo novels”. After introducing the project, the talk focused on questions of preservation and dissemination that the digitization process of photo novels raises. It touched upon metadata and the challenge of recording them using the cataloguing language of the Royal Library, MARC21; the concern of sustainability of the online environment and the need for a long-term strategy; copyright issues that need to be untangled in order to be able to publish the digitized material online; the spaces and possibilities for online publication, such as the online catalogue and galleries of the Royal Library or the thematic collections of Europeana.
The talk was met with interest and curiosity and the Q&A moment that followed the presentation was lively. The questions ranged from the role of private collectors and the importance and impact of photo novels, to the possibilities of digital tools for researching the digitized items, and to suggestions on how to deal with copyright issues… a very interesting discussion that proved, once again, how fascinating this subject is!
