Digitizing Physical Artifacts:

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• Digitizing Physical Artifacts 
• Technology Metadata
• The Changing Face of Content  Creating
  Innovative Information Services for the 21st
  Century
• NFAIS
• Philadelphia, PA
• June 2, 2006

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Key questions in the conversion process

• What
• is it?
• format
• condition
• Why
• preservation
• access
• Who
• intended users
• How
• driven by answers to the above
• How much

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Selecting the appropriate technology

• Format of the source material
• single or mixed formats
• printed, manuscripts, images, etc.
• monographs, periodicals, newspapers, documents
• Media
• paper (bound or unbound)
• large format paper
• microfilm, microfiche, 35mm slides, aperture
  cards
• audio
• video
• Conservation / preservation
• destructive
• non-destructive

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Trends in image capture technology

• Key areas of change
• direct to digital image capture
• robotics (auto page turning, moving camera heads,
  etc.)
• hardware-based image processing
• integrated workflow solutions
• Size - equipment is getting smaller
• Speed - imaging and image processing is getting
  faster

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Scanner comparison
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Checklist of features

• Film scanning
• 600dpi (_at_ 24x) CCD 8,192 elements 150-200 ppm
• simultaneous output of bitonal and grayscale
• auto threshholding and gamma correction
• (real-time) rotation, despeckling and edge
  enhancement filters
• Book scanning
• manual vs. automated
• camera-based image capture (16 megapixel min.)
• 300-600dpi, color, grayscale, binary
• 90o - 110o book cradle
• Page scanning
• Sheet feed vs. flatbed
• 300-600dpi, color, grayscale, binary
• 60 ppm

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Scanning decision tree
Source Guidelines for Electronic Preservation of
Visual Material, Library of Congress,
(http//www.loc.gov/preserv/guide/guide.html)
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Imaging summary

• Understand the what, why and who before you
  decide on the how
• Image quality will impact the quality of derived
  content further downstream (i.e., OCR rates,
  readability, etc.)
• In-house vs. outsourcing
• Match technology to need and budget

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Sources for more information

• Recognizing Digitization as a Preservation
  Reformatting Method, ARL, 2004
  http//www.arl.org/preserv/digi_preserv.pdf
• Guidelines for Electronic Preservation of Visual
  Materials, Library of Congress http//www.loc.gov/
  preserv/guide/guide.html
• Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of
  Monographs and Serials, DLF, 2002
  http//www.diglib.org/standards/bmarkfin.htm
• Digital to Microfilm Conversion Demonstration
  Project 1994-1996, Cornell, 2002
  http//www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/com/co
  mfin.html

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Questions?

• Jeff Moyer
• jeffmoyer_at_napubco.com
• 734.302.6500