Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
Museum Hours  
​Tuesday - Saturday      
10:30am-4:30pm     
​
  • Collections
    • Photograph Collection
    • Newspaper Archives
    • First Nations
    • Fishing for a Living
    • Marine Transportation
    • Telecommunications
    • George & Charlotte Gibson
    • Helen McCall - Early Photographer
    • Beachcomber Relics
    • Farrell Family
    • Early Logging
    • Early Agriculture
    • Inglis and Woodsworth Families
    • Howe Sound Cooperative Cannery
  • Learning
    • Podcast Features
    • Education Kit
    • Genealogy >
      • Cemeteries
      • Churches
      • Genealogy Links & Records
      • Places of Research
      • Schools
      • Societies and Support
    • Museum at Home
    • Museum School
    • School Classroom Visits
    • Historical Videos of the Sunshine Coast
  • Blog
  • News/Events
  • Shop
  • Sunshine Coast
    • Gibsons
    • Roberts Creek
    • Sechelt
    • Halfmoon Bay
    • Pender Harbour
    • Egmont
  • About Us
    • Contact Us!
    • History & Mandate
    • Museum Services
    • Make a Donation!
    • Membership
    • Employment
    • Volunteer
    • Staff & Board of Directors
    • Links

The Process of Digitization

7/27/2016

0 Comments

 
          This week an integral member of the museum came back to work – Garry Morrison, our Image Technician. After two months away on leave he is back and ready to get to work! Gary has been our Image Technician for 16 years, and has digitized all of our collection up to date. Prior to working with us he was a professional photographer that worked on everything from events to celebrity photography. His favourite celebrity to work with was Tina Turner.

          With Garry back came the perfect opportunity for me to learn about an integral process to the Museum: digitization. Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. At the Museum we digitize our photos, newspapers, artifacts, and archives to make database entries easier to navigate. When database entries have a digital reproduction (i.e. an accompanying photograph) it is much easier to confirm we have found what we are looking for – see this blog post for an example!

           We have also used digitization to make our collection more accessible to you! Our Photo Collection and Newspaper Collection have been made available online, and both are great examples of digitization. We received a grant from UBC to digitize our newspaper archives and they also host both the Coast News and the Peninsula Times on their website. This was done in two phases: Phase One handled newspapers dated approximately 1940-1980, and Phase Two covered 1980 onward.

           What are the common ways to digitize physical items? We use two different methods here at the Museum, but there are definitely countless more technologically advanced ways to digitize items. As we are just a small Museum, we stick to the simplest ways of making our information accessible.

           The first way is to scan the items. This can be done using a printer/scanner or a simple scanner. The model we use is the EPSON Perfection V700/V750 Photo. It was state of the art when we bought it, and honestly it still works great. The scanner allows us to digitize a high volume of objects in a fairly short amount of time. Letters, photos, and magazines make up the bulk of the items we digitize using the scanner. Usually we only scan the front page, but if there is something of interest on the back (i.e. informational text) we will also make sure to scan the back. For multiple-page documents we will scan the first and third page. Scanning is a valuable way of digitizing items because it is fast-paced and straight-forward.
Picture
Fig. 1: In cases where we have more than one of the same item and both sides need to be scanned, we can cheat the system a bit.
         In the case of our Newspaper Collection, the scanning process was a little different. We did not scan each and every page of each and every newspaper we have; that process would create unnecessary mechanical wear on the newspapers, as well as introduce the papers to harmful light pollution. Instead, we used microfilms. Microfilms are a type of open reel or cassette ‘negative’ where high volumes of content can be stored in a very small space. By using the microfilm instead of the archival document we were able to make high-quality, high-resolution scans of newspapers without any risk!

          The problem comes when we have to digitize an item that cannot fit in the scanner! Can you imagine trying to scan one of the six farming sickles we have in our collection?


          Instead of scanning items like this, we photograph them. A three-sided box is made of white, lightweight material (examples below) and the item is placed inside. The camera – a higher quality camera that will produce good, high resolution photos - is placed directly over-top the object, and the flash is angled towards the back wall. This way when the camera flashes it will bounce off the sides of the homemade box and onto the object, effectively preventing any shadows. After the photos have been taken they are uploaded to the computer and manually inputted to the database.
Picture
Fig. 2: A homemade lightbox used to photograph artifacts or products for sale. Note the placement of the camera and lights.
​         This process is used because it is also simple and straightforward. Pictures are taken, uploaded, then the best one is chosen and uploaded to the database. There are no tricky steps or big processes to endure besides choosing the best photo to represent your object. The only difference between the scanner and the camera is that one is for documents while the other is for artifacts.
Just for fun I will link you to a few other institutions that have online collections. Each of these has a different way their information is presented, so have fun looking through!
         http://www.uvic.ca/library/featured/collections/index.php
         https://open.library.ubc.ca/

         http://library.harvard.edu/digital-collections
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    BC Historical Newspapers
    Black History Month
    Book Launch
    Borrowed Body
    Canoe Culture
    Canoe Journey
    Collaboration
    Community Building
    Digitization
    Exhibit Exchange
    History Of Racism
    Immigration
    Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
    Japanese Internment
    Konishi Family
    Newspaper Digitization
    Open Mic
    Peformance Poetry
    Peninsula Times
    Performance Poetry
    Squamish Nation
    Sunshine Coast
    UBC Library

    Archives

    December 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    November 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    July 2018
    June 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    RSS Feed

     Home     |     Collections     |     Learning     |     Events     |     Gift Shop     |     News     |     The Sunshine Coast     |     About Us     

© Copyright 2022 Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
716 Winn Rd., Gibsons, BC. (604) 886 8232


Donate Now Through CanadaHelps.org!