Il fattore qualità nei progetti di digitalizzazione del patrimonio culturale: le linee guida FADGI, Metamorfoze e lo standard ISO 19264-1

Abstract

The aspect of quality in digitization projects has been and continues to be neglected, with important consequences also in economic terms. In tenders for the outsourcing of digitization services, reference is usually made to certain requirements to ensure the quality of the images that will be produced, such as resolution or color depth, but objective and measurable requirements are almost never specified, thus leaving the door open to free interpretation of the concept of “image quality”. For this reason, there have been cases of digitization projects paid for with public funds and carried out with unsuitable, low-quality equipment, resulting in poor results and the need to repeat the procedure. This demonstrates the urgent need for measurable criteria for image quality. For this purpose, several guidelines and best practices have been proposed over the years, such as the FADGI and Metamorfoze guidelines, and, more recently, the ISO 19264-1 standard, which aims to harmonize the different approaches and develop uniform criteria for assessing the quality of images acquired in cultural heritage digitization projects. This paper aims to provide a reflection on these issues, emphasizing their importance especially in relation to the many digitization projects underway in recent years.