The Digital Dungeon

Someone asked me to provide some feedback about some equipment I had used. After I sent him a reply, he suggested I put this information on the blog. So, I’ll put this out there. This review is for the I2I CopiBook from Iimage Retrieval. Performance The Scanner performs wonderfully. It has an artificial limit of 300 DPI, but can go up to 380 DPI (once the software is upgraded). The color is very accurate. We’ve been happy using the CopiBook for books, and for maps. I know people that are using it for newspapers as well and I would not hesitate to use it for newspapers as well. Marketing I actually bought the machine based on a recommendation from someone else, so I never saw the machine marketed. The machine is well made, and works wonderfully with ambient light as long as there is no overhead lights. It works off of ambient light better than some lighted machines. I know that Iimage Retrieval is selling some extra lights to buy with the equipment if a suitable location can’t ...

Ultrafiche is an amazingly dense version of microfiche. The images are so small that they might be the size of some small fonts (8-10 size font is probably close). We had an ultrafiche project proposed, and soon realized that none of our equipment could do it. Because the images are so small, you need something that can scan at a much greater DPI, or zoom in closer than most equipment will do. However, it’s not impossible. There are two pieces of equipment that claim they can do Ultrafiche. I haven’t seen them work in person, but I might be looking into it in the future. Here’s the links to the two machines for further reading: ScanPro 2000 ($8000) ST2000 ($95,000)

I’ve been considering how to digitize and display objects, mostly because I have an object project that is coming my way. Our original plan was to put a 3D scan of the object on-line, but any 3D scanner that we could afford wasn’t going to be good enough, so I’ve been looking at different options. Option 1-Just pictures We could just take a few pictures of the object with a neutral background and good lighting. In this case we would treat the collection more like an image collection. Option 2- Flash application My husband and I were looking for cameras and we found this site for Olympus cameras . The cameras are ok, but what I was really surprised about was the display! You can click on the camera and move it around, seeing all different sides. Some of my colleges assumed that it was a 3D model, but I could tell that it was just a series of images taken and strung together using a flash application. At work, we are working on implementing this for at least our first object collection. ...

Toward Digitizing All Forms of Documentation Abstract Large-scale book scanning projects are delivering unprecedented access to the majority of library holdings by giving users unparalleled access to vast collections of books. However, these efforts have focused on typical bound books, which leaves many forms of documentation out of the digitization framework. We present techniques that we have developed to digitize numerous other forms of documentation, including deteriorated manuscripts and photography. These technologies are engineered in conjunction with budgetary and physical constraints often placed on digitization projects. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march09/landon/03landon.html

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/patent_application_reveals_googles_mysterious_bookscanner I’ve had this link sent to me from a variety of different places. I wanted to share it here. I think I have been as curious as the rest of the world as to what exactly Google was doing. I didn’t expect them to be using infrared light. It should be interesting to see what happens with this.

Going Gray? Comparing the OCR Accuracy Levels of Bitonal and Grayscale Images by Tracy Powell and Gordon Paynter . Both from the National Library of New Zealand. The authors processed the same items in bitonal (black and white) and grayscale, then OCRed them. They then counted up the OCR errors. The theory was that Grayscale images would give better results because it gave the OCR software more information to work off of. They were surprised by the outcome. From their experiment, it seems as if there is no difference in OCR quality. This is interesting to me mostly because I had heard that bitonal images gave better OCR results.For a review of how OCR software works, there is a great explanation on Mustek.com: Understanding OCR .

The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries is in Austin this year. It’s an international conference “focused on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues”.