Indianapolis Recorder, February 7, 1931 (used with permission -- click for searchable PDF)

We are pleased to announce that Creekside Digital’s partnership with LYRASIS, the nation’s largest regional membership organization for libraries, has been expanded in two key ways:

• Books on microfilm are now eligible for the Sloan-subsidized pricing under the LYRASIS Mass Digitization Collaborative; and
• Digitized newspapers may now be optionally segmented (organized) by year, month, or date (issue).

Specifically regarding books on microfilm: all 2-up frames are split into two separate output pages. Page images are cropped to the page edge and deskewed. Additionally, in cases where it would improve image quality, Creekside Digital will apply geometric curve correction to remove any page curvature present on the imaged pages, which usually results in improved OCR accuracy. As with our LYRASIS newspaper conversions, all books-on-microfilm projects yield four files per output page: an uncompressed archival TIFF master, a JPEG2000 derivative, a downscaled searchable PDF reader, and a plain text file of the OCR engine’s raw output. These services are all included in the Sloan-subsidized pricing for digitization of books on microfilm that’s available to all LYRASIS members for one low per-page price. Yes — it’s quite a deal.

In the last month, we have digitized student newspapers on microfilm for Clarion University (PA) and Presbyterian College (SC). We are currently wrapping up the digitization of 39 rolls of microfilm of the Duquesne Duke student weekly newspaper for Duquesne University (PA). All of these projects were digitized to Library of Congress’ NDNP imaging specs, and the Duquesne project is the first under our agreement with LYRASIS to feature issue segmentation, with the reader PDFs from each issue being combined into a single multipage file named according to the issue’s date.

John Coffer, modern wet-plate collodion photographer

As always, for questions regarding pricing, logistics, etc., please contact Laurie Gemmill, Mass Digitization Program Manager for LYRASIS, at 800-233-3401 x2908, or email her at laurie.gemmill@lyrasis.org.

Also, for an interesting distraction, take a look at John Coffer’s website. John is a decidely retro photographer in the Finger Lakes area of New York. He lives without electricity, Internet access, or even running water, and has traveled across America in a horse-drawn darkroom / wagon performing his wet-plate collodion photography. Currently, he’s hosting three-day workshops on his farm (teepees included!) where students from all over the world camp out and receive hands-on training to help keep the “lost art” of wet-plate collodion photography alive.