![Digitizing The Cowl – Providence College’s student newspaper Julie Kliever Digital Services Lab Providence College [email_address]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/cowl-091027151504-phpapp02/85/Cowl-1-320.jpg)
Cowl
- 1. Digitizing The Cowl – Providence College’s student newspaper Julie Kliever Digital Services Lab Providence College [email_address]
- 2. Why are we doing this? We wanted to select materials for a pilot project to use with our ATIZ BookDrive DIY cradle scanner. This scanner allows you to process documents such as books or bound materials faster that you could do so with a flatbed scanner. It uses cameras to capture images, as opposed to a “CCD” (charge-coupled device) on a flatbed scanner.
- 3. The collection we chose to scan: The Cowl , which is the title of the College’s student newspaper, began publishing in the late 1930’s. Bound volumes of all back issues are stored in our Special and Archival Collections area.
- 4. How the ATIZ BookDrive scanner works: Bound volume is laid under the glass platen. The two cameras are adjusted for the correct height to capture the image displayed on each side. Both cameras are connected via USB cable to a laptop computer. Once all adjustments are made, we use an application called BookCapture to record image pairs as JPG’s. After each set of shutter-snaps, the platen is lifted, the page is turned, and the next set of images is taken. We can get through a 150-page bound volume in about a half hour or so.
- 5. How images are processed: BookEditor application allows us to crop and fix the images in batch mode. Has separate settings for left and right images. The cropped JPGs are opened using ABBYY FineReader , an enhanced OCR program. FineReader outputs all images into a PDF, “text under image”. This retains the look of each image, but allows for fully searchable text.
- 6. How processed images are assembled: PDFs are uploaded to YUDU, a free online page display application. It converts the PDF into a Flash animation. Resulting Flash app is embedded in web page. www.yudu.com
- 7. In the future I hope to… Scan all back issues (possibly using a PFE?) Have Alumni Relations promote the project (not simply Archives) Index the names in all issues, allow global search from search box. (PHP/MySQL) Learn Adobe Flash so we don’t have to process PDFs via YUDU external site.