Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Library Program

Digitization Fair: Spotlight on Digitization @ the SmithsonianOctober 30, 2006 / Smithsonian Institution

Martin R. KalfatovicSmithsonian Institution Libraries

Smithsonian Institution LibrariesDigital Library Program

Martin R. KalfatovicNew Media Office and Preservation Services

Smithsonian Institution Libraries



Overview of Library Digitizing

• Books are unique objects for scanning purposes

• Differ from 2 dimensional works (e.g. Photographs)

• Differ from 3 dimensional works (e.g. Artifacts)

• Codex has been around for over 1600 years

• The book format (title page, text, index, etc.) since the mid-16th century

• Web delivery of book objects

has interesting challenges



Book Digitizing Process

• Bound materials– Quality issues– Protects the

material for future use

• Disbound materials– Generally better

scans

– Destructive



SIL Imaging Center

• Established 1999

• 2 digital scanning-back cameras– BetterLight

– Phase I

• Flatbed scanners

• All Mac-based



• SIL has used a variety of commercial vendors for non- and semi-rare materials– Kirtas Technologies

(Robotic APT 2400 Scanner)

– Preservation Resources– PTFS, Inc.– JJT– TechBooks

Digitizing Vendors



Digitizing Partners

Internet Archive HQSan Francisco

Internet ArchiveScribe Book Scanner



Digitizing Standards: Page Images

DLF Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials

300 dpi, 24-bit color uncompressed TIFF, or lossless compressed images (e.g. LZW, JPEG2000)



Digitizing Standards: Text Conversion

Re-keying or OCR with correction to 99.997% accuracy

Standard mark-up schema (e.g. flavors of XML like TEI or structured databases)



SIL Digitizing Statistics• Approximately

300,000 scanned pages

• 700+ titles• 1,100 volumes



Who Is Using the SIL Digital Library?

• Sewing machine enthusiasts

• Researchers in Brazil• School kids around

the country

• Lepidopterists in Peru



Major Projects: Digital Editions• History of Science• Natural History• History and Culture

• Art and Design



Major Projects: Trade Literature

• Trade Literature Collections– Over 350,000 pieces,

only a small fraction digitized

– 30,000 images from two collections

– Among SI Libraries’ most popular sites with over 15,000 visitors per month



Major Projects: Image Galaxy

• SIL Image Galaxy– Over 7,000 of SI Libraries’

most interesting images

– Serves as a gateway for product development and licensing

– Assists students and teachers in locating images for use in the classroom and other projects



Major Projects: Scholarly Publications

• Smithsonian Contributions and Studies Series– Collaboration with

Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

– Soon to have over 65,000 pages online with another 80,000 in FY 2007



National and International Partnerships

• Aluka– African history

and culture

• Open Content Alliance



National and International Partnerships

• Biodiversity Heritage Library– Consortium of 10

major natural history and botanical libraries

– Over 1,000,000 total pages of taxonomic literature online

– Model for international library cooperation



Digitizing Philosophy

• Digital Curation– Just as libraries keep books, so do libraries

have a mission to preserve “born digital” material

– Digital Preservation through assisting in the transmission of digital content to future generations



Smithsonian Digital Repository

• DSpace– Developed jointly by MIT and HP– Open source software used in hundreds of

academic libraries

– Preserves and makes available digital output of scientists, researchers, curators, historians, etc.



Needs for Enhancing the SIL Digital Library Program

• Petabyte storage system for source files

• Effective system for archiving of digital material (byte preservation)

• Enhanced capacity for storing/delivering web-deliverable images

• Central programming support for enhanced XML data delivery



Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Library Program

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