ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces disk imaging as an emerging practice in time-based media art conservation. Disk imaging empowers conservators to interact with digital media in a museum collection while upholding the tenets of contemporary conservation ethics: to implement reversible, documented treatment that does not adversely affect future use or investigation of the original work. A disk image can also act as a “snapshot in time,” documentation of a digital volume’s particular content and functionality at a particular moment. The chapter discusses established factors to consider when selecting a file format for disk images intended for long-term preservation and compare the current formats used by museums, archives, and libraries. Disk imaging software reports the software’s progress and results as a matter of course usually as a sidecar text file. In order to better visualize the disk imaging process, the approach can be conceptualized into three primary stages: pre-imaging, imaging, and post-imaging.
