Digitizing slides, etc.

[Elizabeth Roderick]

Greetings - in response to the recent query regarding
digitizing slides:

The Library of Virginia's Digital Library project (see URL in
my signature) has numerous examples of the digitization of
several types of media, including photographs, as well as examples of
possible indexing methods.

Since we did not have slide surrogates for the print images in
our U.S. Signal Corps photograph collection, we had to re-photograph 
the images.  The slides were produced during the film
development process, which were then used to create photo
CD's.  Prior to the creation of the photo CDs, each slide was
labelled with the necessary file name for future linking.  The
photo CD's were used to load the images on the server.

The size of this collection is 3,500 images.  We chose this
route in lieu of scanning deteriorating and curling photographs
directly from the prints.

The file names were used to programatically link the images 
to the 856 field in the brief MARC record that
we created for each image.  The bibliographic database that
resulted is keyword searchable via our WWW HTML gateway and the
user can view the attached images using web browsers that
support tables.

The photo CD route might be faster than scanning individual slides,
particularly if there are a large number involved.

I would be happy to entertain any questions about our project.


-- 
Elizabeth Roderick                              email (eroderic at leo.vsla.edu)
Assistant Director, Library Development         voice (804) 786-2975
  and Networking Division                       fax   (804) 225-4608
The Library of Virginia                         
11th St. at Capitol Square                                      
Richmond, VA  23219

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