Abstract
This paper present an overview of the experiences of the SEPIA programme over the past four years in a context of the changing role of photographic collections in the digital world. Cultural institutions make every effort to provide access to images in their collections by digitization, but how does the digital shift affect preservation?

The status of the original, the role of the preservation in digitization projects, and the difficulty of ensuring continued access to digitized materials are all issues that influence the position of photographic collections. If we are witnessing the end of photography, will management of photographic collections come to be perceived as management of collections of images, irrespective of how they were produced? Are we facing no more than a shift of technologies for making and presenting images? Or will developing technology bring about a fundamental change in the appreciation of originals, and what does this mean for the photographs we keep?

Yola de Lusenet studied English Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam. She taught English for a year and then worked in academic publishing for about 10 years. In 1995 she became the Executive Secretary of the European Commission on Preservation and Access which is housed at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. She now combines work for the ECPA with the position of head of the publishing department of the Academy. Since 1999 she has been coordinating the project SEPIA (Safeguarding European Photographic Images for Access), funded by the Culture 2000 Programme of the European Union.