In  the 16th century, after passing Taiwan and seeing the greenness of luxuriant forests on the island, the Portuguese sailors first exclaimed, “Ilha Formosa!” which means beautiful island. For centuries thereafter, the Europeans, Americans and Japanese all came to this beautiful island for missionary, expedition, trade and colonial activities.
“Sail to the East,” “Journals of Formosa,” “Foreigners on Formosa,” and “Foreigners Here and Now” are the 4 sections of a video produced by the National Museum of Taiwan History. The video presents images of Taiwan in the foreign eyes from the 16th through the 20th century. ....

The Institute of History and Philology (IHP), Academia Sinica, has accumulated a huge amount of historical archives and collections, including archaeological data, language data, ethnological data, rare books, documents of Ming and Qing Dynasties, and stone and bronze rubbings. IHP has produced 10 animation videos so that viewers can get a glimpse of these treasures. ..... 

Apart from the ancient ceramics collected in museums, kiln sites from all over Taiwan are continuously creating ceramics with local features. While there is a need for ancient ceramic to be preserved via digital archives, the need is greater for ceramics with local features to be digitized to enable the world to comprehend the subtleties of the traditional techniques as well as the rich creativity of Taiwanese people. The purpose of this guideline is to integrate prior digitization experiences of domestic institutions; generalize reference guidelines for digitization work; and provide a set of standards for other institutions with ceramic collections when they join the ranks of digital archives, and help these places truly understand the meaning of digital archive work.

The material of ceramic itself easily reflects light and is harder to photograph than other objects. This is why the guideline investigates how to take a picture that perfectly shows the object's shape and at the same time clearly displays its decoration patterns. If digitization work ends at the creation of digital image files, then it brings little meaning to artifact preservation and knowledge dissemination. The establishment of metadata and development of a database system are also required to properly preserve and utilize archive resources as well as truly implement the meaning of digital archives.

Although the guideline focuses on digitizing ceramics, the application can be employed on other objects as long as they are small-scale and three-dimensional. Additionally, most of the concepts in the guideline can be used as references in other digitization projects.

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Ancient Chinese and Western books utilized string as binding material. In China, book pages, along with same-size front and back covers, were sewed together using strings. This method made it easier to browse a book and harder for a book to fall apart. The string-sewing method became common from the middle period of Ming Dynasty on.

The “string-bound ancient books” referred to in the guideline are hand-written or printed books dated before 1911. Since these books are made of paper and string, they can easily be damaged and embrittled by natural disasters or over usage. It is all the more important to digitize them.

By analyzing and sorting out the digitization procedures of the string-bound books of the National Palace Museum, National Central Library, Academia Sinica Institute of History and Philology Fu Ssu Nien Library, and National Taiwan University Library, the guideline provides rules and reference standards to institutions which wish to digitize the same kinds of books. The content includes units of digitization work flowchart, preliminary operations, object digitization procedure, metadata and database establishment, etc. It is hoped that the guideline can provide readers with a complete concept of digital archives and a blueprint for planning digitization work on ancient string-bound books.

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"Calligraphy" is the art of writing. The Chinese have a unique way of using ink and lines on paper to express the beauty of Chinese characters’ different forms and styles as well as the calligrapher’s sentiment. "Painting" uses the elements of dot, line, surface and color in a two dimensional space to express an image. “Painting and Calligraphy” as a phrase include calligraphy, prints, ink paintings, oil paintings, watercolor paintings, and other types of works; all are 2D visual arts. Therefore, the digitization procedure planned by this guideline treats paintings and calligraphy as 2D art works with relatively rich colors.

This guideline took into consideration the digitization procedures of the painting and calligraphy collections of the National Palace Museum, National Museum of History, Lee Shih-Chiao Fine Arts Museum, and Hwa Kang Museum. It provides guidelines and reference standards to institutions which wish to digitize the same kinds of material. The content includes units of digitization work flowchart, preliminary procedures, object digitization procedure, metadata and database establishment, etc. Based on this guideline and actual operational condition, each institution can establish its own digitization procedure to meet its specific requirements.

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