Medieval Manuscripts Revealed on the Web
Welcome to Henry Walters' Library Online!
This blog is being posted by Diane Bockrath and Ariel Tabritha, digitization specialists on a new project that is setting out to digitize the Walter's manuscript collection. Will Noel, our fearless leader, invited us to share a description of the project and some photos with the Archie community. We welcome any comments and questions. We'll also be updating on project developments and adding some of our own observations about digitization.
This project began production in September 2008 (although the planning stretched back much farther), and its proper name (at least for now) is the Walters Islamic Manuscript Digital Project. That's because we're beginning with the Islamic manuscript collection, one of the biggest collections of its kind in North America, with more than 100 bound codices and loose leaves. Funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the project will be ongoing for the next year and a half.
We're situated in a little room in the Asian art wing of the museum that has been transformed into a state-of-the-art imaging suite. Check out the pictures in the photo gallery added 3.6.09 to see the equipment and some sample images.
First, Dublin Core metadata for each manuscript is entered into a simple database that is then loaded into custom-built software that controls the imaging workflow. Once in the software, each folio has its own record that follows it through every stage in process. After the images are captured, Adam Gacek, our cataloger at McGill University in Montreal, adds detailed cataloging metadata. Doug Emery is our metadata expert, otherwise known as Lord of the Minutiae.
Once everything is loaded up, we're ready to image. Instead of a copy stand, we use a custom-built book cradle that allows us to protect fragile bindings. The cradle rotates as you work though the manuscript so that each shot is taken at a constant focal plane and the binding is never strained. It's really adjustable for all kinds of conservation concerns. A vacuum wedge descends and the leaf being photographed lays on the wedge and is gently held in place with vacuum pressure. You really have to see the photos to visualize it. Both our apparatus and our software was built by Stokes Imaging of Austin, TX.
After the images are taken, they are individually color corrected and verified for quality control. We're creating four derivatives from each raw file: an archival tiff, a smaller tiff, an access jpeg, and a thumbnail. Data storage is taking place in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, and eventually all the images will be available on the Web under a Creative Commons copyright, just like Archimedes.
That's the project in a nutshell, but we'll be posting again on different aspects of digitization (and the daily life of a digitizer!) If you'd like to hear more about something in particular, please let us know!
All best,
Diane and Ariel
This project began production in September 2008 (although the planning stretched back much farther), and its proper name (at least for now) is the Walters Islamic Manuscript Digital Project. That's because we're beginning with the Islamic manuscript collection, one of the biggest collections of its kind in North America, with more than 100 bound codices and loose leaves. Funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the project will be ongoing for the next year and a half.
We're situated in a little room in the Asian art wing of the museum that has been transformed into a state-of-the-art imaging suite. Check out the pictures in the photo gallery added 3.6.09 to see the equipment and some sample images.
First, Dublin Core metadata for each manuscript is entered into a simple database that is then loaded into custom-built software that controls the imaging workflow. Once in the software, each folio has its own record that follows it through every stage in process. After the images are captured, Adam Gacek, our cataloger at McGill University in Montreal, adds detailed cataloging metadata. Doug Emery is our metadata expert, otherwise known as Lord of the Minutiae.
Once everything is loaded up, we're ready to image. Instead of a copy stand, we use a custom-built book cradle that allows us to protect fragile bindings. The cradle rotates as you work though the manuscript so that each shot is taken at a constant focal plane and the binding is never strained. It's really adjustable for all kinds of conservation concerns. A vacuum wedge descends and the leaf being photographed lays on the wedge and is gently held in place with vacuum pressure. You really have to see the photos to visualize it. Both our apparatus and our software was built by Stokes Imaging of Austin, TX.
After the images are taken, they are individually color corrected and verified for quality control. We're creating four derivatives from each raw file: an archival tiff, a smaller tiff, an access jpeg, and a thumbnail. Data storage is taking place in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, and eventually all the images will be available on the Web under a Creative Commons copyright, just like Archimedes.
That's the project in a nutshell, but we'll be posting again on different aspects of digitization (and the daily life of a digitizer!) If you'd like to hear more about something in particular, please let us know!
All best,
Diane and Ariel
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