Issues, Challenges and
perspectives of digitization: the
NLP experience
A Presentation for 12th SEAPAVAA Conference
“Digital debates on archives, museums and libraries”
Meeting Rooms 5-6, SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia
Manila, Philippines
Sep 17, 2009
By Edgardo Quiros
Chief, IT Division
National Library of the Philippines

Background
Digitization of Filipiniana books under
copyright registration
Digitization of Copyright registration
documents
Philippine eLibrary
Now a program covering Filipiniana
materials

The Digitization Experience

Phase 1: Outsourced
 25 million pages target was achieved in less
than 1 year in 2004
 By 2007, re-work is still ongoing to correct
unreadable pages. It was stopped because it
will take longer to perform quality control
compared to re-scanning by our staff.
 Some originals sustained damages
 Output file size is large

Phase 2: In-house
1 million pages target was achieved in 1
year in 2007 (Equivalent to 3-year
productivity of another outsourced
project of similar staffing)
Non-destructive techniques were used to
prevent damages
Output file size is smaller
Quality is better than phase 1

Our Gains from In-house
Digitization
Digitized document as output (in
outsourcing this is the only
output)
Ability to digitized materials with
limited budget including
materials with few pages.
Outsourcing requires a minimum
volume of materials.
Better quality of digitized

Our Gains from In-house
Digitization
 Minimal damage/loss, if none at all, to
delicate materials
 Procured equipment, computer
hardware and software can be used
to digitize more materials (new
materials are added each year)
 Procured equipment, computer
hardware and software is useful in
post-digitization services such as
information repackaging and delivery

Comparison
Phase 1 PDF file size Phase 1 PDF file size
of a page of a page
218 KB 41 KB
*see sample page *see sample page

Phase 1 sample page

Phase 2 sample page

Our Gains from In-house
Digitization
 Staff gained skills, experience and
knowledge
 Achieved faster delivery of digitized
materials due to very minimal time
spent in training, selection,
organization, and quality control
 Reports, guides, and papers from the
digitization activity now serves as
reference materials
 Developed appropriate workflows for
each material

eLibrary URL
Visit us at:
www.elib.gov.ph

Thank you and
Mabuhay!