[Music- “Muzarka Op. 67 in A minor”] [Rhianna Gordon]
Digitization is a conversion process.
It’s when we take an item, such as a letter, or a diary, or a telegram, or any other ephemera,
and we convert it into a digital format.
And all this really means is, in our case, for the Seward Project, is we're taking a
picture, a very high-quality picture, and we’re editing it and we're enhancing it,
so that way we can post it on our website for researchers to view.
[Lisa Wright] Digitization is the act of taking, in generally
in my case, an object or a photograph, letter, that sort of thing, and making it into an
electronic representation, more or less, that we can either use for preservation purposes,
or access purposes, or scholarship, or variety of other use case scenarios.
But it's making something physical essentially electronic.
[Rhianna Gordon] So, we in the past have used a Canon camera,
it's the IOS-1D Mark camera.
But more recently we've switched to a Phase One camera because of its curved lens, which
allows us to see, for instance, when we're using it for photographing a diary, we're
able to see every curve of the book.
And it produces a higher quality image, which offers more detail for researchers online.
[Lisa Wright] I use things that are as basic as an iPhone
all the way up to a Phase One reprographic camera to image things at high resolution.
We also utilize 3D scanners, regular single lens reflex cameras.
[Rhianna Gordon] There are some tricky letters and some tricky
diaries, particularly.
Sometimes letters don't want to lay flat, so that poses an issue when we're trying to
get a really clear image, so that way there's no shadows being cast, or sometimes letters
were folded so much that some of the creasing obscure some of the text.
So, there's some certain tricks that we use to keep letters flat or to avoid any shadows
being cast by trying to keep them flat.
For instance, I'm fond of using knitting needles so my hands aren't in the image and also,
we’re able to have a very flat, clear picture being taken.
For diaries, those or any type of bound volume for that matter, those are a little bit more
difficult because we have to have the support on both sides for the binding and what we
need to do then is also maintain the pages, keep them apart, so that way that they're
not flopping back in.
So, we want to do this in a gentle way using some type of book strap or a custom-made book
strap to prevent the pages from flopping in.
One tactic that I'm, I've been using to get through diaries is to do all of the right
side, or the even pages, and then all of the left side.
That way it's consistent, we’re just gently flipping through the pages so we don't do
any further damage to these books, because most of the time the binding is loose, issues
with glue coming apart, that sort of thing.
After I've taken all of my images, I export them to Lightroom, where I make sure that
the images look nice and are clear enough for our transcribers and editors to look at.
I also do a lot of cropping and editing and image enhancing if it's needed.
I try to leave the image as-is, I try not to change any of the coloring or anything
else that may obscure what a researcher could be looking for in a specific letter.
So, my main goal is to make sure that the letter’s centered, it's cropped, it looks
nice, and they're consistent.
So, after that process is over with, I export the images again out of Lightroom, which serves
as our master catalog, so to say.
And I convert all of my images using a software encoding software to create their own individual
files in conjunction with their respective titles, which their titles usually are just
a name, format, who sent them, and who is receiving them.
So, all of this must be in check, so we don't lose track of any of the letters because we
do digitize hundreds and hundreds of letters.
So, once I've done this, I pass them on to our project manager, where then they distribute
the letters for our editing team.
[Music- “Muzarka Op. 67 in A minor”]