Following the plan established during the initial setup of the project and the projected acquisition requirements in response to the research questions identified, the acquisition phase requires careful and detailed documentation in order to fully contextualize the data acquired and make it reusable and understandable for the different actors engaged in the project. The central unit of documentation for this phase is the acquisition project, understood as a container activity for the multiple acquisition events. Each overall acquisition project with a singular acquisition aim should therefore be registered separately, documenting its object of analysis, the level of accuracy required, the agents involved and the relevant dates. To this acquisition project, the documentation of the various acquisition activities from the actual process events will be attached.
It is on the level of the individual acquisition activity that the highest level of detail of documentation is required, in order to support the understanding of the data objects produced. The correct breakdown of the relevant factors that need to be recorded and the nature of these factors is of paramount importance in order to support interpretation and correction of results. Each data object acquired from an acquisition activity event is the result of the presence of some actors in a certain environment at a certain time, and involves the use of particular equipment, set to particular parameters and which engaged a particular methodology of setting up the overall acquisition parameters. We, therefore, argue that each acquisition event contributing to the overall acquisition project planned must be documented separately, entailing an activity-based metadata log.
The acquisition activity itself should be recorded with regards to its object, time and the environmental factors at time of capture. For this activity, the actors involved in carrying out the acquisition and the equipment they deployed is documented. A separate register for documenting equipment can allow quick reference to its technical details. Each session may be subject to a different equipment parameter setup, therefore, for each piece of equipment used and according to the type of device, the parameters used in that session should be logged. Additionally, and separately to the equipment parameters, the parameters of the methodology employed during the acquisition should be logged. These parameters involve the methodology of distance, overlap, calibration and other decision factors which affect the overall outcome of the final digital product. Finally, each acquisition activity is linked to its products which are recorded into the comprehensive digital object register.
Due to the large number of files generated by any given acquisition activity and the already large number of variables to document, the likely documentation unit for the files generated would be a bulk register of the collective objects (when they are of the same type). We therefore propose the saving of digital object results into a container format such as a zip file in order to facilitate the quick and efficient documentation of the acquisition product.
| Name | Element |
| Central Register | Acquisition Project, Acquisition Activity, Equipment Setup Parameters, Object Acquisition Configuration |
| Supporting Register | Equipment, Project, Object, Actors, Digital Assets |
| Related Control Lists | Object Scale Type, Output Type, Accuracy Level Type,Evaluation Criteria, Acquisition Method, Digitization Scale Type, Shutter Mode Type, White Balance, White balance Preset, Camera Configuration Type, Marker Type, Evaluation Criteria, Environment Type, Weather Type, Light Type, Role Type |