[Metadatalibrarians] Metadatalibrarians Digest, Vol 88, Issue 14

Tue Nov 1 21:56:00 PDT 2011

Thanks to all who replied to my questions! That's extremely helpful.

With respect to naming conventions, is underscore and capitalization an absolute no? Granted this is an internal convention, should we always stick to 8 characters and avoid underscore and capitalization? 

Also, once we input the metadata in XMP, what is the next step? (How do we "wrap up" our digital objects?)

In general, I am wondering whether we can identify a mentor who would be willing to review our work flow, help us draw a step by step plan for an intitial digitization project,  send us relevant documentation, etc. Please feel free to send me an email off the list: kc07 at aub.edu.lb

Many thanks in advance!
Kaoukab 
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Subject: Metadatalibrarians Digest, Vol 88, Issue 14

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Today's Topics:

   1. Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts (Kaoukab Chebaro)
   2. Re: Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts (Erin E. Fahy)
   3. Re: Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts (Roel Munoz)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:32:38 +0300
From: Kaoukab Chebaro <kc07 at aub.edu.lb>
To: "metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com"
        <metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com>
Subject: [Metadatalibrarians] Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts
Message-ID:
        <B0A8016E9EA6684CB471C70A64917206035E767A7D33 at AUB-EX.win2k.aub.edu.lb>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:44:32 -0400
From: "Erin E. Fahy" <erin.fahy at mtholyoke.edu>
To: A listserv for Metadata Librarians
        <metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com>
Subject: Re: [Metadatalibrarians] Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts
Message-ID: <4EA96040.8050007 at mtholyoke.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hello Kaoukab Chebaro,

1- Are you intending to scan the original documents or the microfilms
made from those documents? In general and if possible, your best bet on
getting clear and readable images of documents would be to scan the
original. If that is not possible, see
http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/FADGI_Still_Image-Tech_Guidelines_2010-08-24.pdf.
On page 53 there is specific guidance on scanning microfilm. The link is
also a great source of guidance on scanning original documents as well.
Page 59 starts off a good set of quick reference tables that will aid
you in determining resolution, bit-depth, and color settings.

2A- Filenaming conventions that mimic any existing arrangement of the
documents is a good idea, however I would try to think about how to
maintain uniqueness in the naming per each document as well as how to
name individual pieces of the same document. Per your example, if
ms610h11c1.tif identified one multi-paged document, then perhaps
ms610h11c1-001.tif can id page one, ms610h11c1-002.tif page two, etc.

2B- XMP is accessible and alterable within the Tiff, however you need
software (we use Adobe Bridge) to do so. Guidelines on how much to enter
per tiff depends more on how your system will ingest the metadata. Do
you know what system you will be using for discovery/access?

Hope this helps,

Erin Fahy
Metadata & Systems Librarian
Digital Assets & Preservation Services
Mount Holyoke College
413.538.2268

On 10/27/11 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
> _______________________________________________
> Metadatalibrarians mailing list
> Metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
> http://lists.monarchos.com/listinfo.cgi/metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:24:28 +0000
From: Roel Munoz <rmunoz at Princeton.EDU>
To: A listserv for Metadata Librarians
        <metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com>
Subject: Re: [Metadatalibrarians] Digitizing Microfilms of Manuscripts
Message-ID:
        <7AF20BE5-F65D-434B-8A8B-FEC566ACC5F6 at exchange.princeton.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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
> _______________________________________________
> Metadatalibrarians mailing list
> Metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
> http://lists.monarchos.com/listinfo.cgi/metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com

------------------------------

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