1. Digitisation;
Nuts & bolts at the Wellcome
Library
In the picture: getting the most out of images inside & outside your collection.
CILIP, September 2014
Dave Thompson
Digital Curator, Wellcome Library

2. The Wellcome Library
• Part of Wellcome Collection, astonishing public
venue in London developed by the Wellcome
Trust. Where people can learn more about
medicine through the ages & across cultures.
• More than 10,000 readers visit us each year,
including historians, academics, students, health
professionals & consumers, journalists, artists &
members of the general public.
Harvesting
Harvesting

3. Digitisation in the Wellcome Library
• Strategic approach, conscious planned decisions.
• Library transformation strategy, physical to digital.
• From ‘project’ to ‘production’.
• Digitisation as a sustainable end-to-end process.
• Sustainable activity delivering access to content.

4. Overview - three IT systems…
1. Workflow management system – ‘Goobi’ =
PRODUCTION.
2. Digital object repository – ‘Preservica’ =
STORAGE.
3. Front end - ‘the player’ = ACCESS.
Remember, this doesn’t include cataloguing or bibliographic systems. Here
we’re just talking about the process of creating, storing & delivering digital
content. You have to assume that those other systems are also in place.

5. Goobi is our core digitisation system
• Goobi can be used to normalise image formats,
e.g. TIFFs into JPEG2000.
• Used for reporting, volumes, numbers, etc.
• Web based, used by all staff involved in
digitisation.
• Produces METS files, flexible & standards based.
Goobi is the primary interface for most staff involved in digitisation. It’s the only
software that many use, which simplifies training & delivery.

6. Goobi workflow tracking & management
• Manages & tracks the production of content.
• Workflow driven. Already highly automated.
• Allows us to set very granular access conditions.
• Scalable & highly adaptable to different projects.
Goobi has been in production for about 3 years now, it’s already processed
some 2.5 million images. Content which is publicly available in our player.

7. Digitisation the steps
MARC records are imported from Sierra into
Goobi

8. Digitisation – enter the humans
Digitised images are imported into Goobi &
automatically associated with that metadata
We use cameras not scanners for better resolution & quicker imaging.

9. Digitisation – enter the humans
METS files are created in Goobi

10. Digitisation – enter the humans
Goobi initiates ingest of the JPEG2000
images & metadata in Preservica

11. Digitisation – enter the humans
Player pulls images from
Preservica using metadata in the
METS file

12. Goobi – exit the humans
• Goobi key steps performed by humans.
• There are high levels of automation, but not
everything is automated.
• Ambition is to build fully automated workflows.
• Scalable & highly adaptable to different projects.
Remember, humans are still an important part of digitisation. There are some
decisions that only a human can make, & there will always be a need for
human driven processes.

13. Working with digitised content
Goobi Preservica
In-house
Institutions
Contractors
Harvesting
TIFF or JP2
TIFF or JP2
HD & ftp
TIFF or JP2
Normalises TIFF to
JP2
Manual
Automatic
Jpylyzer validates JP2
Auto harvesting of
JP2 & DMD
Grey literature
PDF
Ingest Officer / Digital Curator
Snagging
Snagging

14. Goobi – 19th century book project
• Internet Archive (IA) is digitising our 19th century
books.
• Content is uploaded by them to the IA website.
• IA do Optical Character Recognition the books &
create structure.
• Goobi harvests the files that the IA create to
automatically process content.
http://www.kuka-robotics.com/l

15. Looking at the IA website
https://archive.org/details/wellcomelibrary

16. Looking at the IA website – metadata

17. How the automation works
• Goobi builds a process using the MARC record.
• Against this process it imports the images.
• Uses the scandata file to create a METS file with
pagination & structure.
• Uses the raw Abbyy file to create ALTO files that
allow us to search for words & highlight search
term hits.
http://www.impactautomation.com.au/automation

18. Here’s the record in our OPAC
b20422155

19. Here’s the book in our player

20. How it all works…

21. So, to wrap up…
• Digitisation is a strategic activity.
• We have built an end-to-end process from
selection to access.
• Working at scale so efficiency is important.
• Integrated in our OPAC. No silos.
• Well articulated architecture.

22. Thank you
Questions now, questions later…?
Dave Thompson, Digital Curator
Wellcome Library
d.thompson@wellcome.ac.uk - @d_n_t
http://wellcomelibrary.org/