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Digitization Project Committee
Report to Library Board
August 26, 2002
Digitization Project: Report as of 8/20/02
Dear President Annis and Members of the Library Board:
As the Library Board knows, the staff Digitization Project Team has been meeting for several months now (five times since February 2002). The team includes:
Mary Waterson has a long background with the Local History Room and the clippings file and has served as the local collection expert. She guided us through Local History and its resources with an emphasis on potential items for digitization. Items included atlases, indexes, books & pamphlets, and other materials such as the clippings file and maps.
Jane Spencer is the newest member of the Local History & Genealogy Services staff. With a love for local history and genealogy, she brings a fresh perspective to the discussions. Jane has the primary responsibility to develop, manage, and oversee the digitization of the clippings file and of other hard-copy historical collections of Local History & Genealogy Services.
John Kovach works part time for SJCPL, but he spends the other half of his time as an archivist at St. Mary’s College. He brings a preservation background and a historian’s perspective.
Dawn Matthews is the Head of Adult Reference and Information Services under which Local History & Genealogy falls as her responsibility. She has structured the work of the Department so this project will move forward in a timely manner.
Joyce Hug brings a technical expertise and the ability to gauge the usability of the database we create. She has also been in contact at University Microfilms Inc., a company who has converted the entire NY Times to a digitized format. Joyce was also the former Webmaster for SJCPL
Dave Haslett is Head of automated Services and he has served as our technical and networking consultant.
Linda Conyers has acted as the facilitator of our meetings.
Mary Ann Moran is our Head of Cataloging and she was just recently added to the team because of her expertise and the need to classify and create appropriate subject headings for all the materials that will be scanned and entered into a searchable, online database.
As for myself, I have tried to provide a broad overview of what this project hopes to accomplish and offer the resources and authority to complete the project in a timely manner.
Mission Statement:
We worked on and developed the following Mission Statement for the team. The charge for this project is included in both the Technology Goals 2002-2004 and the Service Responses for 2002. The mission is:
Implement an on-going digitization program for special Local History & Genealogy clippings file, old local atlases and maps no longer protected by copyright, and family history collections with permission from authors by November 30, 2003, with the clippings file as the first priority; complete one third of the clippings file digitization by December 31, 2004.
Scope of Project:
The goals of the Planning Committee are to:
Items that we are considering for digitizing in order of priority:
The task force’s plan was to meet for a period of 3-6 months to accomplish its goal, finishing in July or August. We are still meeting monthly and believe it will take until the end of this year before the task force is done.
Estimated costs for the project were originally around $100,000 (just in equipment and software costs). The initial project, we estimated, will probably take about three to five years from the time the task force submits a proposal to the Administrative Council until the first two priorities (local atlases and the Local History Clippings File) for digitization of paper files are completed.
One of the questions raised in regards to access was could the digitized material be accessed at the branches, or from home. Due to copyright laws and The South Bend Tribune ownership, our work could only be made accessible in house at the Main Library, and only at a few computer terminals.
We also looked at what is being done at other libraries, museums, etc., in particular those projects at the Library of Congress and at the New York Times. We hope to visit other places (either physically or on the web) so that we can see these types of projects and we can determine the best methods that work in a large-scale digitization project such as ours. We formed several sub-committees to explore various questions. Dave Haslett and I recommended the task force members explore the following websites as the best links for all kinds of in-depth information on digitization of historical records, the kinds of equipment being used and how to judge the best equipment and software, and various vendors who sell such equipment and software. The best websites to explore included:
Dave’s Links:
Mr. Napoli’s Links:
Cornell University Library's "Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging Tutorial" is on-line, both in
English and Spanish, at: http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/index.html
The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has made its "Handbook for Digital Projects: A Management Tool for Preservation and Access" available on-line at: http://www.nedcc.org/digital/dighome.htm
The Colorado Digitization Project has a strong resource section, including "Guidelines and Standards" and "Resources for Digital Projects," at: http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/contents.html
For more types of equipment that is available, try:
We still have concerns over the accessibility of digitized materials once they have been scanned and made accessible through an online database. Questions that are still unresolved are how many computer terminals in Local History will be dedicated to this kind of in-house database access? Could these terminals support multiple access points? Copyright issues would certainly effect whether or not we could have one or more users at a time. While this is true for many of The South Bend Tribune articles in the clipping file, we have many non-copyright protected materials that could be made available at the branches or for viewing from home on computers over the Internet. Our 1875 South Bend atlas is a good example of these types of material. But even with copyright protected materials, the software can be programmed to permit only one user at a time for any given document.
We need to approach The South Bend Tribune to let them know how important this project is to us. Perhaps we could come to some agreement over copyright issues so that back issues in digitized format could be made available over the Internet for a reasonable licensing fee. We will also need some help from the Library’s attorney in this endeavor.
Joyce talked to UMI with regard to their current digitization project. The project leader attended a trade show and graciously agreed to look at some equipment and pass along vendor information that we might find useful.
Jane noted some problems we should consider when we think about scanning materials.
The task force concluded that we will probably need to hire an additional professional cataloger (we now have three full-time professional catalogers on staff) to create and maintain the subject headings for these various, in-house digitized databases, particularly the newspaper clippings file. This was an unanticipated, on-going cost for the project. Another alternative may be to train one of the present full-time professional staff members of the Local History & Genealogy Services, such as Jane Spencer, to do this specialized form of classification and cataloging. This should probably be done by someone who is intimately familiar with the resources and the services on a day-to-day basis.
It was noted that we would need very good printers for patron use when the project is completed in order to get the best possible prints. Some documents are in very poor condition and are hard to read in their original format. We will experiment with different resolutions and various software programs to clean up items that are in poor condition (very old, yellowed paper originals, for example) to assure print quality and readability.
We reached a consensus that we would scan most items as an image rather than as ASCI text, unless we received them in their original ASCI formats, such as family histories that many families now write with a word processing program on a computer.
During one of our meetings, the task force created two sub-committees to tackle a couple of issues. One committee (Mary, Jane, John) has been working on taxonomy and recommends where to get subject headings and what subject headings should be changed/updated. The equipment/software committee (Joyce, Dave, Mr. Napoli) have been researching various types of equipment and vendors.
Indexing/Taxonomy Sub-committee: This subcommittee came up with a couple of indexing options. One is to create our own program using Filemaker Pro, a database management program for both Macintosh and Windows computers. Innovative Interfaces, Inc. the company that provides our automated acquisitions, online catalog, circulation, and patron database systems, has just announced a software package that assists with indexing and integrating scanned historical documents with the library’s on-line catalog. This offers the possibility for integrating these historical digitized databases that we create with our present online catalog of library materials. The best option for the immediate future, however, appears to be the Docuware 4.5 software that has been proposed to us by Information & Records Associates, a local firm. It has a long history of success, is being used by many businesses on many types of scanners and many different types of materials, and has good, local support with training that is locally available.
The Indexing/Taxonomy Sub-committee also made the following indexing recommenda-tions that were accepted by the task force. They include:
Equipment/Software Sub-committee: We learned early on that there were really only two book scanners on the market that were large and powerful enough to scan the size atlases, books and documents that we needed to scan. One was the Minolta PS 7000 which can scan books up to 17” x 23-3/8” at up to 600 dots per inch. However, it could not do color scanning. The other was the Indus Book Color Scanner 5002 which can scan in color, black & white, or grey scale, and can handle atlases, books and documents up to 17“ x 22” in size and resolutions up to 600 dots per inch.
We also learned that we would need a smaller, color, flatbed document feed scanner to scan letter or legal size sheets. The best one we could find for the features we need is the Fujitsu Fi-4750C Color Duplex Document Scanner, which will scan both sides of a sheet of paper simultaneously at a rate of 50 letter-size pages per minute.
At some point we also need to visit a nearby university or library where they are using such scanners and see how the process works for them. The committee looked at the differences between a flatbed scanner versus a digital camera. We also came to the conclusion that we needed two types of equipment: both a flatbed feed scanner for smaller documents and a overhead camera scanner for large books.
The equipment/software subcommittee arranged three demo sessions with two different vendors who sold and maintained the kinds of equipment and software we needed. One was a company based in Wisconsin (Indus MIS, Inc.) and the other was a local company (Information & Records Associates, Inc. of South Bend, IN). Since the local company could sell and maintain the equipment being sold by the Wisconsin firm, and had a better software product that was compatible with the Indus scanner, we decided to have a second demo of the two scanners we selected (Fujitsu Color Duplex Document Scanner and the Indus Book Color Scanner 5002). The demo was successful and I & R Associates answered all our questions. The task force met immediately after the demo back at the Main Library and agreed to accept the proposal of the local company. In order to beat an expected price increase in the Indus Book Color Scanner 5002, the most expensive piece of equipment, I went ahead and accepted I & R Associates’ proposal, filling out a purchase order and making the first down payment of $21.206.
The first planning meeting with I & R Associates is scheduled with the task force next Tuesday, August 27th, and we expect equipment and software installation to take place two weeks later. Staff training will begin soon after that.
The I & R Associates proposal which I have accepted and on which I placed a $21,206 down payment is enclosed with this summary. It describes the two scanners, the list of equipment and software that goes with each scanner. The equipment includes two computers, one for each scanner, monitors, database and scanner software, maintenance agreements, and staff training for a total cost of $63,682.00.
We are still working on the problem of locating a room to hold the equipment and the workstations for the scanning staff. We need a space that is close to the materials to be scanned so that they continue to be available to users while the scanning is going on. A small office will be available in the Local History & Genealogy Department within the next month or so, but we think it is a bit too small to comfortably house the scanning equipment and the two staff members or volunteers who will do the scanning. Possible ideas for expanding the room have been proposed by the Local History & Genealogy staff and we will be exploring these possibilities. We need to add at least six more feet to the south end of the existing room and this may be possible. An engineer or architect will need to look at the space involved. Some space heaters and lights may need to be moved to create the additional space. Another possibility which the Local History staff just proposed was to free up some of the space in the adjacent microfilm room by moving some of the equipment in that room into the office space and some other available spaces in the Local History & Genealogy room. Any of these solutions would be a temporary fix until we can deal with a full-blown expansion of the second floor of the Main Library in 2004 or 2005.
If you have any questions about any of this, call me at home this weekend or I will be happy to answer them at the Board meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Donald J. Napoli, Director