The Digital Assembly Line

This year, a colleague and I gave a presentation on how the digital lab at Texas Tech University ramped up its digitization efforts. It's called The Digital Assembly Line, and it lives at the Texas Digital Library repository.

I happen to stumble upon it while doing a Google search.

Comments

Atiz scanner and Kirtas scanner aren’t playing nice with eachother

I love the Atiz scanner for it's simplicity, good design, and utility. I love the Kirtas scanners for their speed and their "wow" factor when people see the things work. The only problem I have at the moment is taking our current Kirtas workflow (using Kirtas's software Bookscan Editor, Superbatch, and OCR manager), and finding a way to make the Atiz scanner workflow work with it. The Atiz machine came with a hefty batch editing program that does a great job of cleaning up the images and making them wonderfully presentable. The machine even came with a PDF maker, but it doesn't OCR on its own, and it doesn't give you the options that Kirtas' OCR manager do. So, I want to process the Atiz scanner finished images using Kirtas’s OCR manager. However, that seems to be more difficult than I had first expected. For the next month, I’ll be trying to figure out how to make this marriage of Atiz and Kirtas systems work. If it ends up failing, then I may have t...

Ex Libris Digital Preservation system

Today I attended a webinar from Sun Microsystems about the new Ex Libris Digital Preservation system. You can view the webinar here . The talking points are they handle all the hardware and they can handle the software. They claim it’s secure and built with redundancy. The major problem is that they say you can’t provide access to the files without getting Primo (Ex Libris’s new Amazon-like catalog toy-which is looking fun). They won’t convert the files for you when the formats out of style, but they make it so that you can maintain and upgrade the files. All and all, I like the idea of a comprehensive digital preservation system being handled by people who know hardware. I Just think it is going to be too expensive for most libraries. Time will tell how many libraries pick this up.

Microfilm and Microfiche scanners

I have been researching high speed microfiche and microfilm scanners for the last year. There are four major companies that produce microform scanners. Mekel (a Crowley Company), Wicks and Wilson , nextScan ,and Sunrise . They each have their advantages and disadvantages. Both nextScan and Sunrise have 3-in-1 or 2-in-1 models, where you have one machine (~$100,000) that comes with one attachment, and you buy other attachments for different types of microform (Microfilm, Microfiche, and Aperture card). Each attachment costs extra. I never figured out the cost for the attachments. nextScan also has a dedicated roll film scanner , that I’ve heard good reviews from the Newspaper Digitization Project in Australia . In general, I have heard that the 3-in-1 or 2-in-1 machines are fine, but they tend to go slower than dedicated machines. They really are built for versatility and marketed toward libraries who can only afford one machine that can do all types (Paying $100,000+ for one...

The Digital Dungeon

Search This Blog