[Metadatalibrarians] Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts

[Doreva Belfiore]

re: 2b: ExifTool is a free, open source software package that can read and
write various types of metadata, including XMP. It's available in Windows,
Macintosh, and UNIX format from the author's website:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Hope this helps you,

Doreva Belfiore


On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Roel Munoz <rmunoz at princeton.edu> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Regarding your questions:
>
> 1--Microfilm usually has targets that indicate the scale at which the film
> was shot. So if an 8.5" x 11" page was captured on 35mm microfilm the
> magnification would be about .14 (11" page captured on a piece of film 1.5"
> long). So if you want 400 ppi scans of the film: 400/.14=2857. This total
> is the actual resolution the film is scanned at. Most dedicated microfilm
> scanners ask for the scale the film was captured at but if those targets
> weren't a part of the microfilm try to ascertain the size of the originals
> the the microfilm was made from and provide this information to your vendor
> or do these calculations for scanning the film in-house. My opinion is that
> scanning microfilm at higher than 400 ppi in aggregate is not necessary and
> won't yield better OCR results at higher resolution. As for techniques the
> document Erin Fahy recommends is an excellent resource.
>
> 2A--I'm not sure there's a wrong answer as the naming convention should be
> consistent and within institutional parameters. As for the naming
> convention you propose, perhaps a directory named ms610h11c1 with image
> files contained: ms610h11c1/000000001.tif, 00000002.tif, etc.
>
> 2B--As Erin pointed out Adobe Bridge or Photoshop allows for inputting and
> viewing XMP metadata. Additionally Adobe provides a tool for creating
> custom XMP fields tailored to your program needs:
>
> http://www.adobe.com/devnet/xmp.html
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Roel Munoz
> Digital Initiatives Imaging Manager
> Princeton University
> Firestone Library
> 1 Washington Road
> Princeton, NJ 08544
> 609-258-8010
> fax 609-258-0441
>
> http://pudl.princeton.edu
>
>
>
> On Oct 27, 2011, at 5:32 AM, Kaoukab Chebaro wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have the following questions which I am hoping to get some help with
> (and please excuse my vagueness and confusion, as I am learning the ropes
> here):
> >
> > 1- I am wondering what are the standards and best practices for
> digitizing microfilms of manuscripts: what is the minimum resolution to
> follow? 400dpi? 600 dpi? Can we go with JPEG, or should we stick with TIFF
> for archival purposes? (what about the fact that the Manuscripts are
> already microfilmed: would that count in favor of using jpeg or pdf, since
> microfilm is a good preservation medium?)
> >
> > 2- As we start scanning some of our documents, I just want to make sure
> that we have all the necessary metadata we need for the smooth flow of our
> project (our collections are fully catalogued so we are hoping to be able
> to input all descriptive metadata at later stages): I would appreciate some
> guidance on the various milestones of metadata needed at each stage of the
> digitization project from scanning to document delivery and document
> preservation.
> >
> > More specifically, I would like to know if the following is OK:
> >
> > A- file naming convention: up to 8 characters, no underscore, no capital
> letters, following internal classification systems, followed by file
> extension name, e.g.:
> > ms610h11c1.tif for manuscript witht he following shelf mark: MS
> 610:H11.c1
> >
> > B-  Once we start scanning our documents, we get an EXIF file which is
> embedded within the Tiff (my understanding is that this records the
> technical metadata). But then we can only get to the XMP from pdf, not from
> Tiff. In XMP we can input various metadata, e.g. title, etc.
> > So my question is twofold:
> > a-is it Ok to have the XMP in pdf but not Tiff? (do we lose any
> important info by not having the XMP in the Tiff??)
> > b-ANy advice on how much metadata should we input into the XMP at the
> initial scanning stage?
> > Is filling in title, author, etc. info better left for later stages when
> working with XML?
> >
> > Mnay thanks in advance for your help!
> > Kaoukab Chebaro
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