Repurposing Older Digital Material: The Ford Motor Company clipping book series Mid-Michigan Digital Practitioners Group Meeting March 27, 2015 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Clipping Books Created by Ford Motor Company 198 individual volumes Date range 1911-1951 Detroit-based and other U.S. newspapers Material assembled by date and by subject Fragile and decaying Access and use is problematic
Clipping Books
Clipping Books
Previous Digitization Work done circa 2000 Contracted Graphic Sciences, a Detroit-area vendor Scanned 72 volumes 1913-1929 76 disks Content accessed through proprietary .exe Program required local installation Data only exists on original optical media
Previous Digitization
Previous Digitization
Can I reuse this data?
Can I reuse this data? YES!!
Step 1: Extract Image Files Called original vendor What are these .BIN files? TIFF files with different extension! Copy files from disk and bulk rename extension Bi-tonal scans Roughly 1.4 MB each Approx. 200 images per volume
Step 2: Create PDF Bulk file rename for correct page order Use Acrobat Professional One image per PDF page Reduce PDF size by downsampling images Now at 200ppi +75% reduction Run Adobe OCR Add cover and end sheet Approx. 70 MB for 200 page volume
Step 3: Make PDFs Accessible Completed PDFs will be posted to: Internal document store powered by XTF ContentDM for public access
Step 4: Update Finding Aid Revise to use current formatting Add content to make DACS compliant Add links at item level to CONTENTdm PDFs Post finding aid internally and on library catalog website
Similar Projects PhotoCDs General Electric ledger books Extracting TIFF data General Electric ledger books Imaged along with clipping books
Big Finish Thank You Older data can be repurposed Data may be hiding…sometimes in plain sight May be held in proprietary “wrapper”…experiment! Work can lead to other “pots” of old data Thank You
Brian Wilson Digital Access & Preservation Archivist The Henry Ford Dearborn, Michigan brianw@thehenryford.org @brilwil