Digitization is of crucial importance to data processing, storage and transmission, because it "allows information of all kinds in all formats to be carried with the same efficiency and also intermingled". Though analog data is typically more stable, digital data, has the potential to be more easily shared and accessed and, in theory, can be propagated indefinitely, without generation loss, provided it is migrated to new, stable formats as needed. This potential has led to institutional digitization projects designed to improve access and the rapid growth of the digital preservation field.
Sometimes digitization and digital preservation are mistaken for the same thing, however they are different, but digitization is often a vital first step in digital preservation. Libraries, archives, museums and other memory institutions digitize items to preserve fragile materials and create more access points for patrons. Doing this creates challenges for information professionals, and solutions can be as varied as the institutions that implement them. Some analog materials, such as audio and videotapes, are nearing the end of their life-cycle, and it is important to digitize them before equipment obsolescence and media deterioration makes the data irretrievable.
There are challenges and implications surrounding digitization including time, cost, cultural history concerns and creating an equitable platform for historically marginalized voices. Many digitizing institutions develop their own solutions to these challenges.
Mass digitization projects have had mixed results over the years, but some institutions have had success, even if not in the traditional Google Books model.
The term digitization is often used when diverse forms of information, such as an object, text, sound, image or voice, are converted into a single binary code. The core of the process is the compromise between the capturing device and the player device so that the rendered result represents the original source with the most possible fidelity, and the advantage of digitization is the speed and accuracy in which this form of information can be transmitted with no degradation compared with analog information.
Digital information exists as one of two digits, either 0 or 1. These are known as bits (a contraction of binary digits) and the sequences of 0s and 1s that constitute information are called bytes.
Analog signals are continuously variable, both in the number of possible values of the signal at a given time, and in the number of points in the signal in a given period of time. However, digital signals are discrete in both of those respects – generally a finite sequence of integers – therefore a digitization can, in practical terms, only ever be an approximation of the signal it represents.
Digitization occurs in two parts:
Discretization The reading of an analog signal A, and, at regular time intervals (frequency), sampling the value of the signal at the point. Each such reading is called a sample and may be considered to have infinite precision at this stage; Quantization Samples are rounded to a fixed set of numbers (such as integers), a process known as quantization. In general, these can occur at the same time, though they are conceptually distinct. A series of digital integers can be transformed into an analog output that approximates the original analog signal. Such a transformation is called a DA conversion. The sampling rate and the number of bits used to represent the integers combine to determine how close such an approximation to the analog signal a digitization will be.
Good
I will follow you you will follow me
You must be logged in to post a comment.