Spent three wonderful days in Banff at the ARLIS/NA annual conference over the weekend. Taught my "Digitization Strategies for Preservation and Access" workshop on Friday to a nicely balanced group from museums, libraries and archives.This workshop was the first to explore my current thinking that we are at a convergence with better/faster/cheaper technology (Moore's Law); intelligent, automated workflows; and a tremendous demand for universal access over the internet. This convergence is making commercial mass digitization projects, like Google's, possible. I believe this mass digitization, at preservation quality levels, is now feasible for cultural institutions as well.
