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Page 16 Vol. 75, No. 1, Spring 2012 Mississippi Libraries
were then moved into cold storage; essentially
a large room with temperature and
humidity controls. The temperature is
maintained at forty degrees with a humidity
level of thirty-nine percent.
The collection was then organized by
county to further accessibility. The counties,
along with the number of recorded
schools, are as follows: Benton (thirteen),
Clay (sixty-seven), Grenada (thirty-one),
Holmes (sixty-seven), Jones (thirty-eight),
Marshall (nine), Panola (forty-two), Prentiss
(fifty-one), Quitman (thirty-two), Sunflower
(seventy-eight), Tallahatchie (sixtyone),
Tate (one), Union (twenty-seven),
and Yalobusha (six). The information was
entered into a Microsoft Access database
and then exported into an Excel spreadsheet.
The information recorded includes
the school name, county name, racial
demographic, date, grades taught, image
viewpoint, description and format. This
information was extremely helpful in compiling
the metadata for the digital collection.
Staffing for the Project
In April 2010, after continued interest
in the collection, Archives & Special Collections
began discussing the large task of
digitizing the Phay Collection. Knowing
this would be my first large scale digitization
project as Curator of Visual Collections,
I was unsure how many months, student
hours and wages, and digital space
the collection would consume. After
crunching the numbers, the project began
in June 2010. In order to complete a task
this size, staffing was very important.
When the project began, five students were
working in main special collections as
archival student assistants; this figure does
not account for students in the Political
Archive as their work is separate. The five
students were divided among four department
areas: one in Blues, one in Digital,
one in Visual and two in Manuscript. In
order to supplement our limited staff, I
hired a work-study student to work solely
on digitizing the Phay Collection. This student
was also able to work as an intern during
the summer of 2010. When digitization
began, those working on the project
included the newly hired archival student
assistant, Jason Kovari (Digital Initiatives
Librarian), and me (Curator of Visual Collections.)
Mr. Kovari’s role throughout the
project was to clean up the existing metadata
and to upload and create the digital
collection. My role was to oversee the digitization
process and to make critical decisions
about the collection. The student’s
was to scan the black and white photographs.
In January 2010, three additional
students, already employed by Archives
and Special Collections, were added to the
project to assist in scanning the black and
white photographs and the Kodachrome
slides. Of these students one was a regular
paid student and the other two, work-study.
Process of Digitization
The black and white images were
scanned at 16-bit Grayscale, 600 dpi, with
no color restoration. The Kodachrome
slides were scanned in 24-bit Color and
900 dpi. The slides were scanned at higher
resolution because of their original size,
two inch by two inch. Scanning at a higher
resolution captures significantly more
detail that could otherwise be lost at 600
dpi. Only on a few slides, where the
images were too dark to view, color correction
was used to enhance the image’s
details. All images were later converted to
100 dpi jpegs for use in the digital collection.
Since the purpose of digitizing the
Phay Collection was to create a digital collection,
I decided to postpone the digitization
of the negatives. The negatives are the
same as the prints and would only be
scanned for preservation at a later date.
Equipment
Two types of scanners were used in the
digitization process, EPSON Perfection
4490 photo and EPSON Perfection V700
photo. The V700 was primarily used to
scan the Kodachrome slides because of
the provided two inch by two inch slide
holder. The software program EPSON
Scan, when used in thumbnail view, reads
the slides separately thus creating individual
files. This process allows for twenty
slides to be scanned at the same time, creating
twenty separate digital files. This significantly
reduced the amount of time
scanning the slides. For each photograph
there were two very similar images in each
file. Each image was scanned for preservation
but only one was chosen to be a part
of the digital collection. Since one image
was always clearer, crisper and visually
more appealing, it was the item chosen for
the digital collection. In order to distinguish
the files from each other, we developed
a naming scheme; “collection name
abbreviation_box number_folder number_item
number”. In the case of slides, a
page number replaces the folder number.
The image chosen for the digital collection
was labeled as item number two in the file
name. This told the Digital Initiatives
Librarian which items to upload into CON-
TENTdm, our digital collections management
system.
Cost of Digitization
From the project’s beginnings in June
2010 until its completion in March 2011,
approximately 600 student hours were
spent physically digitizing the items. The
total cost of this labor amounted to
$1600.00. The work-study positions
accounted for 320 hours and the regular
wage student made up 150 hours. This
money was already allocated to the department
through our student assistant budget
over two fiscal years. Costs were also kept
down through the use of an internship for
a total of 120 hours. Archives purchased
scanning equipment in early 2010 therefore
eliminating the cost of equipment to
be included in this project. One cost that is
rarely considered but should be accounted
for is digital storage. Proper storage and
back-up can cost tens of thousands of dollars
but without it, there is the risk of losing
and/ or corrupting digital files. Fortunately
for us, a system for digital storage was
already in place. This collection used sixtyfive
gigabytes of storage space for both the
preservation and access copies, excluding
metadata. This space included the creation
of 13,400 files accounting for both access
and preservation; access copies were created
for duplicate items not included in the
digital collection.
Setbacks
With every project there is one thing
that is certain, issues will be discovered
and mistakes will be made. As we began
the project, it was quickly realized the