1. 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

2. Clipping Books Created by Ford Motor Company 198 individual volumes
Date range
Detroit-based and other U.S. newspapers
Material assembled by date and by subject
Fragile and decaying
Access and use is problematic

3. Clipping Books

4. Clipping Books

5. Previous Digitization
Work done circa 2000
Contracted Graphic Sciences, a Detroit-area vendor
Scanned 72 volumes
76 disks
Content accessed through proprietary .exe
Program required local installation
Data only exists on original optical media

6. Previous Digitization

7. Previous Digitization

8. Can I reuse this data?

9. Can I reuse this data? YES!!

10. 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

12. 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

13. Step 3: Make PDFs Accessible
Completed PDFs will be posted to:
Internal document store powered by XTF
ContentDM for public access

14. 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

15. Similar Projects PhotoCDs General Electric ledger books
Extracting TIFF data
General Electric ledger books
Imaged along with clipping books

16. 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

17. Brian Wilson
Digital Access & Preservation Archivist
The Henry Ford
Dearborn, Michigan
@brilwil