Visual Archive of Yugoslavia - Digitizing photographic material of Museum of Yugoslav History

Abstract

Photographic material of Museum of Yugoslav History is consisted of photos, glass plate and film negatives and photo albums. Material can be found in the following collections: Photo Archive of Josip Broz Tito, The collections of gifts presented to Josip Broz Tito: photo albums, framed portraits and slides, A collection of images of Josip Broz Tito with photo and cinema equipment, A collection of reportage 1944-1947, Photo Archive of Museum of the Revolution of nations and nationalities of Yugoslavia with a collection of photo albums, and Stevan Kragujević Bequest. The process of photo archive digitization was started in 2012 with the support of Telenor Foundation. The result of the cooperation was digitization of 132,000 photographs that documented the socio-political activity of Josip Broz Tito from 1947 to 1980 and are available on the web at http://foto.mij.rs/site/galleries. The signing of the agreement between the Museum of Yugoslav History and the University of Basel marked the beginning of a major joint project named Visual Archive of Yugoslavia. This project represents further development of the digitization process started in 2012. and it is as part of the SCOPES programme (Scientific co-operation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland) which is aimed at safeguarding and promoting the visual heritage of Yugoslavia. The project objectives are the development of infrastructure for digitization, improving the methodology of processing, digitizing over 50,000 negatives, development of a database and web portal for presentation of photo material from museum collections in cooperation with Mathematical Institute SANU, organizing student practice at the museum in a collaboration with the Center for museology and heritology at Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Media and Communications at University of Belgrade, organization of workshops and exhibitions in a cooperation with a partner on the project, data exchange with the portal Visual Archive Southeastern Europe (VASE) and publication of the manual based on the best practices of digitization process. In this paper will be presented the technical platform of the final solution, metadata schemas and vocabulary for describing the structure and the current progress of the project.