[MUSIC]
>> The museum studies program at RIT is unique.
It's housed in the College of Liberal Arts,
and it is a Bachelor of Science program,
which means that it has all
of the beauty of the liberal arts core that
are also informed
with a technological and professional focus.
Our students are placed at internship sites
across the region, and across the
United States, and the world.
And that's where they often build
this hands-on ability
to take what they've done in the classroom,
and apply it to a real world environment.
RIT was fortunate to receive in 2020
a National Endowment for the Humanities
research and development grant.
And we are working together in museum studies
in partnership with scientists from imaging
science to look at historical documents,
and to help understand how we can uncover
what's beneath the surface.
>> Part of our research program in the
Center for Imaging Science is developing
imaging systems to study historical artifacts,
artifacts of cultural significance.
And for years, we have been doing this using
very large, very expensive,
very complicated difficult-to-use
imaging systems that cost on the order of
a couple hundred thousand dollars.
We wrote a proposal to the National Endowment
for the Humanities
believing that we could develop a low cost
imaging system,
and that we could make it very easy to use,
so that you didn't have to have trained
scientists, or technicians
to actually run the imaging system.
It could be run by people that are actually
actively working in the humanities.
>> The system that we're building
is called a multi-spectral imaging system.
And that helps us to uncover text that's
faded, or erased, or damaged.
And that helps historians and curators to read
text that possibly hasn't been visible
for thousands of years.
>> We unpacked the machine, set it up,
and then you can place the document, scan it,
and then we could do a run through of all
the different lights that it can use.
So it runs through 16 cycles of lights ranging
from UV to infrared, and then all of the red,
blue, and green colors in between.
>> And then after we image the documents,
we copy the data over, so we can put it
into the app, and kind of play around with it
to bring those texts forward.
>> I've seen it where spectral imaging has gone
so far as allowing the under-text
to re-emerge,
and allowing the over-text to kind
of disappear, so that the under-text could
really be read by scholars.
So with this technology, we have the ability
then to recover lost text, lost images,
to learn more about history,
to learn more about literature.
The development of an affordable imaging
system will make this technology
accessible to libraries and archives,
and museums across the world.
>> We are fortunate to collaborate with three
local institutions.
We are taking our machine on site
to those collections,
and then sharing both the images,
and what we uncover.
>> The aim for this is that any library, museum,
even scholars will be able to build
the system on their own - all the software,
all the how-to manuals will be freely available.
It's all open source.
>> We want this equipment to be very accessible.
And we want it to be very easy for people
to put together, and use it,
and they can make their own discoveries.
>> When we started this project,
we thought, man, this is a cool idea.
Let's see what's going to happen.
And as we've been working with this,
and showing people the system,
we've gotten such great feedback from
museums and libraries,
that we're believing that the system is
probably going to multiply
throughout the world.
>> Projects like this enable our students
to work alongside leading scholars
in the field.
But it also allows students to get real world
experience by working with professionals side
by side working with their collections.
>> This fits my future goals, because now,
I am able to run the software.
So when I am looking for a job,
I will be able to sell that skill
to my employer.
And I think that will really help me
differentiate myself.
>> The imaging science program is unique.
There's no other imaging science program
in the world that offers bachelor's, master's,
and PhD degrees.
The museum studies program
from my understanding is fairly unique.
There are not many of those either.
And so the fact that we have both
of those programs right here on this campus
provides a very good mix of both interests,
and skill sets, and educational opportunities
for students
to leave RIT a very unique approach to what
they're going to do later on in their careers.
>> In a real workspace, you have everyone that's
an expert in different things collaborating
together to finish a project.
So it really gives you a taste
of the real world.
>> I found the project to be very enlightening,
in that it was educational, as well
as practical, which I think expands
a lot more skills,
and understanding that other institutions,
or classes might not have offered.
We can become trailblazers in how technology
can be implemented in physical collections.
>> It's like rewriting history,
or discovering new aspects of history.
It's like there's all this information that
was lost to us, and now, we can discover it.
It's amazing.
>> And I think that it's very vital in terms
of society in general
to have the tools to know about our past.
And I think that collections and items are
super helpful in terms of retelling history.
>> We really think the program is
unique in that regard,
because the students are really in this
tightly-woven matrix of liberal arts, technology,
and experiential learning.
And in the end, what we really hope
is that students feel well prepared to go out
into the world,
to go out into their communities,
and to really impact those communities
through their work in libraries, archives,
and museums.