WORKING WITH VENDORS: THE UCONN “DAILY CAMPUS” STUDENT NEWSPAPER DIGITAL REFORMATTING CASE STUDY DIGITAL COMMONWEALTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE MAY 1, 2013 DEVENS COMMONS CENTER DEVENS, MA Michael J. Bennett University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs, CT, USA

Define What You’re Trying to Do Ask yourself…  What are you trying to reformat (original format description and amount)?  How will the resulting digital files be used?  Will any post-processing be needed to allow for these anticipated uses?

Define What You’re Trying to Do  Let the answers to these basic questions guide your imaging requirements, specifications, benchmarks, and expected deliverables.

Document The Request  Turn your answers into something that can be coherently communicated to local stake-holders and possible vendors.  This can take the shape of a formal RFP or just a bulleted narrative.  The important thing is to document your request early on and then fine-tune as needed.

Document The Request  This will make what you are trying to accomplish clearer from the outset to not only external stakeholders but also to yourself and your own institution.

What We Had  Daily Campus: UConn student newspaper  53 Reels of Preservation Microfilm  Pub. Date 1896 – 1990  Roughly 38,500 Film Frames  2 Page Spread Per Frame: 77,000 Total Pages  Pages Microfilmed Sequentially Across Reels  No Inherent Issue-by-Issue Segmentation  6,252 Total Issues

What We Wanted…

What We Thought We Needed Archival Still Image Master Files For All Pages:  According to NDNP Specification  One Image Per Page  Grouped Into Reel>Issue>Nested Folders

What We Thought We Needed NDNP Specification Archival Master:  Conforms with TIFF 6.0  8-bit grayscale  400 dpi preferred  Uncompressed  Only de-skewing should be applied  Cropped to page edge  TIFF tags required for preservation*

What We Thought We Needed NDNP Specification Production Master:  Conforms with JPEG 2000, Part 1 (.jp2)  Use 9-7 irreversible (lossy) filter  Compressed to 1/8 of the TIFF  Tiling, but no precincts  RDF/Dublin Core metadata in XML box*

What We Thought We Needed PDF Files For Delivery:  OCR’d  One PDF per Issue (Page Image Segmentation)  PDF Nested Into Reel>Issue>Folders  NDNP Stipulates 150ppi, Medium Quality JPEG Image Layer*

What The Vendor Said Still Image Master Files For All Pages:  According to NDNP Specification? A: YES, TIF, Lossy JP2000, PDF  One Image File Per Page? A: YES, 2 Up Page Frames Split  Grouped Into Reel>Issue>Page Nested Folders? A: NO, Issue-level segmentation=$0.88 per issue 6,252 issues x $0.88 = $5,501 extra. (ouch) All files in single Reel-level folder.

What The Vendor Said PDF Files For Delivery:  OCR’d? YES  One PDF per Issue (Page Image Segmentation)? NO, see previous  PDF Nested Into Reel>Issue>Folders? NO, Individual PDF files per page in single Reel- level folder…

So, What We Needed To Do Then PDF Files For Delivery:  Segment Our Own Issues Visually  Adobe Bridge/Acrobat

Problems PDF Files For Delivery:  OCR Vanishes When Merging Vendor’s PDFs in Acrobat into single issues.  Supplied 150ppi PDFs (NDNP Specs) didn’t look so great. At least when compared to what we knew we visually had in the TIF archival masters.  So…

Solution PDF Files For Delivery:  We crafted our own merged, issue-level PDFs in Acrobat from the excellent TIF masters instead of the vendor’s individual PDFs.  300ppi: Noticeably sharper, better for printing, but larger file sizes.  So, we did some analysis before proceeding full steam…

Solution PDF Files For Delivery:  We came up with an average issue size in pages.  And paid attention to the largest issues that we saw throughout the run.  Finally, we felt that the merged 300ppi PDF file size hit was worth the extra image quality and flexibility it gave to end users for printing, image manipulation, etc.

Solution PDF Files For Delivery:  Our largest PDF issues are roughly 30MB  Average, roughly 10MB  In the end, as bandwidth continues to become more robust over time, the size of these files may be viewed as trivial…

Question We Asked Ourselves Since the TIFs and the JPEG 2000 Master Files contain the same visual content, should we archive just the smaller JPEG 2000s as Archival Masters? 77,000 total pages: Ave. TIF Page Image 18.5MB > Total Storage = 1.4TB Ave. JP2 Page Image 2.2MB > Total Storage = 169GB

UConn Collaborators  David Lowe, Preservation & Data Management Services Librarian  Betsy Pittman, University Archivist  George King, Digitization Specialist  Saroj Kashwan, Segmentation Volunteer  Dan Bullman, Segmentation Volunteer

Further Resources NEDCC Preservation Leaflet:  Outsourcing and Vendor Relations leaflets/6.-reformatting/6.7-outsourcing-and-vendor- relations leaflets/6.-reformatting/6.7-outsourcing-and-vendor- relations Link To UConn Daily Campus Online Archive:  Link To This Presentation: 

Contact Michael J. Bennett Digital Production Librarian University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs, CT, USA