'Collections and Digital Initiatives‘
Museum & Gallery Services Queensland
Thursday 15 October 2pm-5pm
State Library of Queensland’s Heritage
Collection digitisation projects:
The Curse and it’s Cure
Christine Ianna
Manager, Publications Reformatting
christine.ianna@slq.qld.gov.au

OVERVIEW
1. Scope of SLQ Heritage Collections
2. Digitising Options
3. Assessment of capacity of Kirtas®
Automated High Speed Book Scanner
4. A case study -The Curse and It’s Cure by
Dr T.P.Lucas –digitised and discoverable
on-line
5. The Future!!

1. SLQ's Heritage collections
۩ John Oxley Library, established in 1934
• ~9,000 collections of written and printed
original materials
• ~346,893 published materials (as a
minimum)
• ~67,250 music scores
• ~4,263 hymns
• ~ 1million+ pictures/slides

2. Digitising Options
۩ Internal
 Camera
• Image taken from above
• Suitable for fragile items
• Varying qualities depending on camera and
operator capability
 flat bed scanner
• Object required to be scanned face down
• Convenient but not necessarily to a standard
• Not suitable for fragile bound pages
• Relatively slow

2. Digitising Options
۩ External
Overhead ‘book’ scanners
• Book eye®, ATIZ® etc
― Books can remain bound
― Split platen/cradle supports spine of book
to minimise damage
Automated Book Scanner
• Kirtas®
― High speed scanner
― 90o book cradle mechanism minimises
damage
― Books can remain bound

3. Assessment of capacity of Kirtas®
Automated High Speed Book Scanner
Books selected* for trial-
Variety of sizes
Text
Text & images
Colour combinations
Assorted bindings
+ Out of copyright

3. The Kirtas® Automated High Speed
Book Scanner
۩ Turns pages using a slight vacuum
۩ Operator experience essential
۩ Not able to scan loose pages or
۩ Not able to scan fold out inserts
۩ Digital files produced include
 Archive TIFs
Research JPGs
Searchable PDFs
Thumbnail

4. A case study
۩ First title loaded to SLQ website
The Curse and It’s Cure
Author Dr T.P.Lucas
published in two volumes in 1894
One of the first novels set in Brisbane
Very brittle
Too fragile to allow access

4. The Curse and It’s Cure
۩ Going Live!
 Archive TIF, Research JPGs, Searchable PDFs
and Thumbnail files Ingested into Digitool
 Now discoverable by ‘One search’
 Links included in bibliographic record
 Searchable PDF version online
 Thumbnail display
 Can be viewed as a virtual book
**Interestingly ‘went live’ during the Brisbane
Writer’s festival and proved more popular with SLQ
twitter clients than the recent dust storms

Digitisation
۩Benefits
Available to anyone around the world
Clients can now print pages & illustrations
(especially where they couldn’t copy before)
Provides searchable text saves hours
Reduces handling of fragile items and minimises
damage
BUT………

Digitisation
۩ Lessons
Do it once!
Do it well!
Collaborate- don’t reinvent the wheel
Know where to find it- sort the metadata and file
names out beforehand
Clarify copyright
Attribute ownership

THE FUTURE??
Already there’s a book scanner being developed by the
Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory in Tokyo can reportedly
digitize at 1000 frames-per-second. A Japanese TV
station story on this new technology is impressive even if
you don't speak Japanese
http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/wbs/trend_tamago/tt_154.html
Or perhaps the Video: Espresso Book Machine 2.0 an
automated book-making machine where an operator
selects a title to print, and within a few minutes a book
emerges, with full-colour cover, trimmed to an exact size,
and indistinguishable from the publisher’s version- truly
“Hot off the press!”
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/video2.htm

In the meantime:
۩ Keep up to date with our new publications as they go
live by subscribing to SLQ newsletter/rss /twitter feeds