IT and Museums: State Historical Museum and ELAR team up to unveil a CD with a unique map collection

The unique collection of the State Historical Museum includes among others masterpieces of cartographic art on paper, silver, china and metal. They enable to trace the change of map drawing styles in course of five centuries, from mid. 16th – mid. 20th cc. Many of these works of arts and crafts due to their age and high value have never left the museum’s storerooms and have never been displayed to the wide public.

To digitize this unique collection the State Historical Museum has purchased a high-quality scanning equipment ELAR PowerScan Д14000 A0-20/25, intended for digitization of museum collections of maps, books, drawings, graphic etc. ELAR PowerScan completely eliminates the risk of damaging the originals, and gives an opportunity to scan any kind of documents, including old and particularly valuable. Non-contact scanning and safe lighting without IR or UV radiation ensure preservation of documents during digitization. A high-quality photodetector and the control system of scanning scale allow scanning images with a high optical resolution. 42-bit color depth, lighting and color rendering control ensure reprographic quality of scanned images. ICC profiles provide a way to ensure consistent color while next re-printing. The uniqueness of this scanning equipment lies in its ability to create digital copies of large images as a whole. During processing of large maps their separate parts were scanned and then “glued” on the computer. It resulted in inaccuracy of glued parts and badly-proportioned images.

The result of co-operation between the State Historical Museum and ELAR Corporation has become a limited edition multimedia CD, which contains textual materials and photographs of exhibits and 100 unique maps. The CD is said to be released at the “Maps of gallant century” exhibition organized within 24th International Conference on the History of Cartography, which will debut in Russia at the Russian State Library July 10 – 15, 2011.

The joint project is called to open access to 100 unique maps, whose historical and artistic value had been the obstacle for putting them on display for museum’s visitors before.