July 30, 2009 -- The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative is continuing work on guidance for digitizing cultural heritage materials.

The Still Image Working Group has recently published guidelines for “TIFF Image Metadata” (PDF) and has published a "Digital Imaging Framework," (PDF) designed as a coherent framework to describe and validate imaging performance and quality. A new "Gap Analysis" document identifies the remaining digital imaging research needs yet to be addressed.

They have also published several news presentations: a podcast by Rob Buckley of Xerox, who explains the benefits of the JPEG2000 format, and "Federal Digitization – Moving to Common Guidelines" (PDF) slides from the Archiving 2009 conference.

The Audio-Visual Working Group has recently published a set of notes from previous meetings, as well as the proposed table of contents from the upcoming "Recorded Sound Digitization Overview and Guidelines."

Two new agencies have joined the initiative: the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Institute of Standards and Technologies.

For the latest news, check the initiative web site regularly.