Chronicles of The Chronicle: 1

Getting The Chronicle of The Early American Industries Association from print to digital is becoming a story unto itself. I first announced this project back here. Or at least I announced it on my blog after reading in Shavings, the newsletter of the EAIA of the official proclamation of the soon-to-be availability of the journal on DVD. While waiting for the first batch of scanned images to arrive, I find myself reviewing how we got to where we are now.

The first problem was assembling a complete set of The Chronicle. In particular, a complete set of issues of sufficient quality for scanning. I had an almost complete set, but many where not up to snuff. Damp stains, pencil and pen marks, trimmed edges and even three hole punch marks made many issues unusable. Toby Hall (Director of the Association), through fore-thought, had been acquiring back issues over the years. Patty McLeish, the editor of the Chronicle (and now Shavings) had recent issues already in PDF format, along with a bound copy of the first volume. From these three sources, we where able to compile a complete set of workable issues.

Next came, how to go about digitizing the entire run? The possibilities where: 1) do it ourselves, 2) hire a document imaging service. My experience in this process had been all corporate stuff. Hundreds of thousands of pages are the norm in that realm. This project topped out at around 4000 pages, plus the material was irreplaceable. I made a short list of document imaging services who might handle a small job such as this one. Included in the list was the service we had used to create the Digital Dictionary of American Toolmakers. Although, in that case, we provided the PDF ready to go, just needing DVD duplication and cover printing services. As it turned out, and luckily so, this same vendor could handle original ...

scanning through partnering with another imaging service. The other vendors I talked to turned down the project as too small, too problematic or where simply not interested.

As an alternative, we considered doing the job in-house. I happen to like the Fujitsu Scanner line of ADF (automatic document feed) machines. The price for a machine capable of handling this project ran in the $900.00 to $4000.00 range. The low end machine wouldn't cut it for quality of output and for speed. The mid-range machine, which we use at my workplace, would do the job, but would be time consuming as it is not a particularly high speed machine when operated at the resolution needed for this project. The high end machine, which we also use at work (which I love but can't afford), would be the best choice, but too expensive.

Then our vendor of choice came through with flying colors. They where very willing to work with us in figuring out the best settings that would meet our needs. Unfortunately, in document imaging, there is little in the way of predetermined parameters for any one given job. It's all trial by error, with each person involved having a different mind-set of what would work best.  Jennifer over at CDWorks came through. After a string of telephone calls and emails, we agreed upon an estimate for the job. I sent a few sample copies over to CDWorks for a trial run. Which tale will be continued in Chronicle of The Chronicle: 2

Till next

Gary