The Digital Dungeon

The Copibook is an overhead scanner from a company in France called i2s. It's sold here in America by iimage Retrieval . Although they have many fine products, I am only reviewing the CopiBook. The machine runs off of an internal computer and can output to a network, to another computer, or to a flash drive. The equipment is easy to use, and easy to train. I can get someone working on it in 5 minutes for simple stuff, and 10 minutes for more complex items. The CopiBook is designed to work with ambient light. It does this by making a “light map” of the whole scanning area. If there is a shadow, it will adjust the brightness of the scan in that area. If there is excessive light in another area, it will lower the brightness in that area. So, you get a very clean flat image. For people who have problems with lighting, you can add light to the machine as needed or move the machine to a better light location (where the light is more consistent etc.) The image quality is wonderful. At 300...

File Formats What format you use is dictated by your goal. Libraries have a tendency to want to have a small access copy of reasonable quality, and a high quality archival copy of reasonable file size. To get a better idea of what the different formats are, and what they do, I've linked to some articles: TIFF (Tagged Image File Format ) JPEG JPEG2000 PDF JPEG is the perfect format for full color or grayscale images because it provides a nice balance between quality and file size. The format is stable as long as you do not edit the file over and over. If you are going to be editing the file, save it as a Tiff first, then save it as a JPEG. JPEGs are perfect for access copies, and sometimes for Archival copies. A full color or grayscale Tiff is huge as far as file size goes. A black and white Tiff, however, is generally smaller than a black and white JPEG. Don’t ask me why. Tiff also provides the best quality and stability. You can use Tiffs for archival storage if you have a...

Image editing software Which software you use depends on what you are digitizing. If you are digitizing images, Photoshop or something similar is vital. The GIMP is a similar program that is free. Whenever possible you want to avoid having to edit the images at all. You want your scan to have good lighting, good white balance, and a good crop box before you touch it with a program. It saves time and saves the image from unnecessary tampering. All image editing software works off of different algorithms. This is why the same function will work differently in different programs. The more expensive and popular software (like Photoshop) has good algorithms that may produce better results. The basic functions you want in an image editing software: · color correction · cropping · brightness/contrast correction Text image processing software If you are scanning mostly text, then you need a totally different kind of program. If you are doing text, then you are likely doing books, newspapers ...

Let’s start with the basics. In order to understand digitization, first you have to have at least a glancing understanding of the basic technology involved. Why? Because the individual parts of a computer can make the difference between a smooth workflow and a choppy one. Trying to do massive amounts of computations by processing hundreds of images at once can be annoying if your RAM is insufficient or if your network can’t handle the load. You can get a great overview by checking out the following articles from howstuffworks.com . Don't forget to check out all the links at the top of the article to see more. How PC's work How Scanners work How Digiatal Cameras work How Servers work How Networks work

My work consists of rapidly learning about every aspect of digitization for libraries. In my fast paced required learning, I’ve realized that a lot of what I need to know is spread out over the vast information landscape. Very little of it is combined into a cohesive single location that is easily referenced or discussed. So, I wanted to start this blog as a place to review my learning, and offer it to the community for discussion and reference. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting about the basic knowledge I’ve had to become familiar with. Most of it will be training documentation that I’ve written for the students who I manage. After I get through that, I’m going to start going through the problems and solutions that my coworkers and I have had to tackle in regard to digital library initiatives. I hope this blog is a useful and informative place for anyone interested in the topic.