Sharing a unique collection whilst conserving
the originals - an online collection

The situation

As the steward of unique historical material, the desire to share and duty to conserve
can conflict.

The Bodleian Library wished to share the John Johnson collection with the world - it is one of the most important collections of printed ephemera in existence.

It needed a solution that would facilitate this within negligible impact on the original material.

The challenge

The objective was the creation of an online collection of 65,000 items (approx. 150,000 images) that would provide an invaluable resource for researchers.

The material included posters and handbills for theatrical performances, broadsides relating to murders and executions, book and journal prospectuses, popular topographical prints, and a wealth of different kinds of printed advertising material.

• The collection comprises a wide variety of loose and bound material
• Originals in sizes up to A1 in dimension
• The images had to be high quality scans of 600dpi x 600dpi without any image interpolation.

So, a substantial volume of material, in a wide range of formats, to a high resolution and originals that demanded the utmost care and attention as it went through the process.

The answer

The Bodleian Library individually barcoded each item during the cataloging stage and Capita TDS developed an indexing program which integrated the library's database and barcodes at the point of scanning, thereby eliminating the risk of indexing errors.

• Capita TDS arranged the secure weekly transportation of batches of material between its Bicester facility and the Bodleian Library in Oxford
• Upon receipt, each batch was securely stored in the Capita TDS temperature and humidity controlled archive storeroom
• Many of the original documents featured multiple items pasted onto a single mount, Capita TDS scanned the original as a complete image and then saved each individual item as an individual item with a unique index number. Thus end-users have a facsimile of the entire collection as it is presented, along with each constituent image
• Following scanning, each image was checked by quality assurance for image quality, indexing criteria and completeness
• The images were then processed through OCR software which, as many of the items have text presented in different orientations across a single page, needed to be highly sophisticated.
  

The end result is a unique collection now available to be shared on both an acadmic and commercial basis worldwide.

Technical

The entire collection was scanned as 24bit colour and supplied as uncompressed tiffs, with all text captured digitally via OCR (optical character recognition).

Capita TDS invested in state-of-the-art scanning equipment, adding a Zeutschel OS10000 overhead book table scanner fitted with an A1 baseboard to its already impressive plant list. The scanner is fitted with a motorised book cradle for safe handling of delicate and fragile bound material.

The OS10000 is ideal for conservation projects;

• Angled book supports to support bound material during scanning reducing pressure on book spines.
• Minimal scanning time for each image
• A cold lighting system with no UV radiation only activated during the actual capture time.