Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston Newspapers

Michael VandenburgDatabase Librarian

Kingston Frontenac Public LibraryJanuary 24, 2007

Kingston Frontenac Public Library’s Experience

Digitizing Early Kingston Newspapers

Digitizing Early Kingston Newspapers

Michael Vandenburg

January 23, 2007

Michael Vandenburg

January 23, 2007

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Initial project of Digitial Kingston was digitization of KFPL’s index to Whig.

• Goal was to both digitize the index and link resulting database records to images of the newspaper pages.

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• First stage was digitizing the index.

• The card catalogue index to the Whig from 1810-1849 contains approximately 130,000 cards like this…

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• and this…

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Summer 2003

• 4 students hired to scan index cards.

• Perform OCR on resulting .tif image files.

• Perform limited proofreading.

• Run macros against resulting text files to normalize data.

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Here’s a sample of final text file

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Stage 1 completed in Fall 2004

• Data loaded into VUBIS database

• Made available online at www.digitalkingston.ca

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Stage 2 begun in October 2004

• Photographing pages of bound copies of newspapers housed in W.D. Jordan Library at Queen’s

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Used very high resolution cameras and copy stand

• Several images taken of each page and merged into single image

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Intitial images in .tif format

• Raw format from camera is lossless

• 16 million colors

• Average file size is 23 meg

• Here’s a sample from 1810

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Here’s what it looks like at full zoom:

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Stitched images in .tif format

• Merged using Canon’s Photostitch software

• Average file size is 60 meg

• Here’s a sample from 1845

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Here’s what it looks like at full zoom:

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Web published images in .pdf format

• Reduced from stitched image using eyedrop process in Photoshop

• Average file size is 1.5 meg

• Here’s a sample from 1830

Digitizing Early Kingston NewspapersDigitizing Early Kingston NewspapersMichael Vandenburg – Digitization Forum – January 23, 2008

• Late 2006, completed photography of bound volumes from 1810-1848.

• Early 2007, image processing complete.

• .pdf files of newspaper pages loaded onto web server.

• Available at:

• http://www.digitalkingston.ca