Why CHI Exists
General Considerations | Need | Advantages | First Steps

Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI) works to advance the state of the art in digital capture and documentation of the world’s cultural, historic, and artistic treasures. By providing tools, technology, and training, CHI drives adoption of new best practices by cultural heritage professionals. These best practices benefit museums, libraries, archaeological sites, other cultural heritage institutions, and the audiences they serve.

To develop and disseminate best practices, CHI collaborates with digital imaging and cultural heritage experts from leading industry and research organizations. CHI technology collaborators include scientists at: Hewlett Packard Laboratories (HP Labs) and university and government researchers around the world. For more information on CHI’s methods in the current context of cultural heritage research, read 'The Big Picture' position paper.

CHI’s cultural heritage collaborators represent top projects and sites throughout the United States and Europe — from Southern California to the Swiss Alps and the Mediterranean. CHI ensures that its cultural heritage partners are dynamically involved in solution development from the beginning. See Featured Projects for examples of CHI’s collaborative work.

CHI selects and develops technologies that meet stringent requirements. CHI best practices use standard digital photography tools and techniques. CHI processes can be fully automated for ease of use and are scientifically reliable. The results (high-quality, interactive images and data) are readily available to scholars via the Internet.

CHI refines best practices through rigorous field tests with real-world collaborators and freely distributes its work to the cultural heritage community. For details about CHI’s approach, visit the What CHI Does section.