Abstract

The use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) has the potential to significantly advance the study of ancient inscriptions and artifacts. The opportunity to develop reliable interpretations depends on the capacity to extract meaningful data from ancient artifacts that have incurred physical damage. RTI involves capturing multiple images with light sources at a consistent distance from various angles evenly spaced around the targeted object. A program produces a master-image that is both dynamic and interactive, enabling researchers to move a virtual light (or lights) around the imaged artifact in real time and to employ a number of effects in order to view fine texture details of the imaged object in unprecedented detail. A significant obstacle inhibiting the use of RTI technology concerns easy broad access to RTI data. Researchers from a given institution are typically confined to employing RTI for study and analysis “in house,” without the means to broadly distribute high-resolution RTI images over the Internet. Hence, there is need for specialized repositories to distribute online high-resolution RTI images. This paper discusses the benefits of RTI technology and one example of online distribution of RTI images in a specialized academic digital library.