Evolution of Technology and Digital Preservation

A substantial part of today’s cultural artifacts are created in digital format, including the almost totality of text and music, and a great deal of still and moving images. Preserving digital information for the generations to come is more troublesome than it may appear at first. Both the fragility of digital media and the fast waves of technology obsolescence conspire to make digital data inaccessible, sometimes in a timeframe as short as half a decade. The pursuit of digital preservation, however, is no longer a choice. In this talk, we will address and explore the technology history of digital imagery, file formats, compression algorithms, preservation issues, and the state-of-the-art in techniques to prolong the life of images in digital format.

Short Bio

Arnaldo received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering, from the Universidade Federal da Paraiba (UFPB), Brazil, in 1978, 1981 and 1987, respectively. He did graduate studies in Electrical Engineering (Digital Image Processing) at the Reinsch-Westifaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH Aachen), Germany, 1981-1985, post-doctorate studies in Computer Science at the Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Electrotechnique et Electronique (ESIEE Paris), France, 1994-1995 and at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (LIP6 – Paris 6), France, 2008-2009.

Arnaldo is a faculty member at the Computer Science Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil (since 1990). He was an associate professor at the Electrical Engineering Department (DEE), UFPB, 1985-1989, a research assistant at the Rogowski-Institut, RWTH Aachen, Germany, 1981-1985, and an assistant professor at DEE/UFPB, 1978-1985. He is the header of the Digital Image Processing Group and coordinator of an international cooperation agreement (CAPES/COFECUB) involving: UFMG, UNICAMP, UFOP and PUC-Minas, Brazilian side, and ESIEE Paris, ENSEA Cergy-Pontoise and Université Paris 6, French side.

His research interests include digital image processing and computer vision applications to medicine and fine arts, multimedia information systems for cultural archives, and content based information (image and video) retrieval. He has published more than 150 papers and has advised 34 MSc dissertations and 8 PhD thesis. He was the general chair of the IX Brazilian Symposium on Computer Graphics and Image Processing (SIBGRAPI), 1996, and chair of the Program Committee for SIBGRAPI 2004, chair of the Tutorials track for SIBGRAPI 2006, and chair of the Workshop of Thesis and Dissertations SIBGRAPI 2007. He was Guest Editor for the Journal Pattern Analysis and Applications (2005-2006). He has been referee for the SPIE journals JEI and OE, and IET Image Processing Journal. He has been supported by an individual research grant from CNPq, since 1987, and FAPEMIG, since 2008.