The operation of enhancing the Croci Archive, promoted by the Federico Zeri Foundation in liaison with the Scientific-Technical Committee of the Arts Library, will consist in restoring, digitizing and filing 4,196 glass-plate negatives according to the following schedule:

ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION

Cataloguing the archive as a collection, by drawing up the FF file according to ICCD guidelines.
This file, which includes a tree graph of its inner sections, forms the starting point for detailed cataloguing of individual phototypes. It may be found in the Zeri foundation EXPLORE THE COLLECTIONS catalogue, and is also accessible from the Arts Library website.

CLEANING, DIGITIZING, CONDITIONING

Cleaning and scanning operations refer only to the negatives. They will involve the 4,196 plates some of which also form the matrices of the positives printed by Fotofast, low-quality prints not always doing justice to the image. The materials will be cleaned and digitized in the same place, avoiding perilous transporting of the plates.

Steps foreseen:

  • dusting the plates by soft brush or micro-vacuum on the emulsion side, and by hydroalcoholic solution on the glass side.
  • trasferring the negatives by scanner onto film and glass slide, tif output format size being 5,000 pixels long side (average definition c. 500 dpi)
  • placing each glass plate in a PAT chronos paper envelope (closed on three sides)
  • placing the materials, including those on film, in new PAT passed containers marked with the inventory number found on the old greaseproof wrappers (pergamini )

COMPUTERIZED CATALOGUING

Filing each of the 4,196 plates inside the Zeri Foundation database, using “Archive management” software. This sytem is highly suited to cataloguing photograph collections of art history material, providing as it does 113 descriptor items for photographs and 90 fields devoted to recording data on the artworks and monuments documented. One is also able to integrate materials from different photograph collections virtually, enhancing information on the object in question from other iconographic sources – a great boon to art history and photographic history studies.
All operations to be checked and coordinated by the Federico Zeri Foundation and the Arts Library scientific-technical committee.

View the Croci Archive files online: https://bit.ly/3yoYu4q