Digitizarea – o metodă modernă de conservare a cărților și a documentelor medicale vechi

Abstract

Digitization is a means of representing an object, image, document or a signal (usually an analogue signal) by a discrete set of its points or, respectively, by the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. The result is called "digital representation" or, more specifically, a "digital image", for the object, and "digital form", for the signal. The method of digitization represents a breakthrough for documents preservation and conservation in libraries. Digitization is a method of creating digital surrogates of analog materials such as books, newspapers, microfilms, and videotapes. Digital preservation comprises also a series of activities aimed towards ensuring access to digital materials over time, with major advantages. The facsimile provided by digitization is available for the users without any strain concerning any further deterioration of the old original documents, turned fragile over time. Digitization significantly improves the process of information dissemination by providing full access to documents of all kind, especially to old, rare, and extremely valuable ones. Moreover, the method significantly reduces amounts of physical storage space in a library. The present paper shows Transilvania University Brasov’s Library experience in old medical documents digitization, as part of an European project aimed to provide an old medical digitized book database, to develop online information dissemination services, and to form digitization-skilled personnel.