How We Digitize: An Audio Cassette Tape
As a part of the digitization project for Association of University and College Employees (AUCE) fonds, we digitized an audio cassette tape entitled “The Steward”, which is a speech recording about being a union steward. Today, we will show how we digitize an audio cassette tape. Equipment To digitize a cassette, we use the […]
How We Digitize: Microfilm
Microforms are reduced-size copies of documents used for access and preservation. There are a few different formats of microforms, the most popular being microfilm (film reels) and microfiche (flat film sheets). This post focuses on how we digitize microfilm. At the Digitization Centre, we have digitized newspaper microfilms using our flexScan equipment. Although microfilm […]
OCR and non-Latin text
The UBC Digitization Centre is responsible for the creation of more than 50 collections, all available through the Open Collections website. Our collections are diverse in formats, information and languages. Having non-English materials, or materials that are not written using the Latin-based alphabet, may be a barrier to access and retrieving information. But technology can […]
How We Digitize – Revisiting the Berkeley Poster Collection
The Berkeley Poster Collection, housed at the UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections, contains 250 posters created between 1968 to 1973 which document the advocacy and activism of student groups during the Vietnam War era. These posters attest to the tense political climate present in the United States and South East Asia during that […]
A Peak Behind the Curtain
This week we have a quick peak at the behind the scenes stuff we do here at Digital Initiatives. Some of these images are new and some are a bit older, but all give a fun look at the secret stuff that happens to get the content you see online! Scroll to the bottom to […]
More Digitization of BC Sessional Papers!
Digitization of BC Sessional Papers, from 1933-1952, is on its way. Phase 3 of Sessional Papers has been approved and digitization will start this summer! This phase will look at 41 bound volumes from the British Columbia Sessional Papers. It will increase our current collection by 19 years – and as an added bonus there […]
Poem Packs an Epic into a Tiny Package
Forget watching Star Wars, Avengers, and Lord of the Rings on your cellphone– if you are looking for a larger-than-life story delivered to you in a small container check out our newly digitized epic poem Orlando Furioso in Western Manuscripts. The full size of the book is only 11 by 5 cm. This preciously small package […]
Happy Chinese New Year
Known as the Spring Festival the Chinese New Year is a holiday determined by the lunisolar Chinese calendar- meaning the date changes from year to year. Festivities start the day before the New Year (Feb 8th this year) and continue until the Lantern Festival – celebrated this year on February 27th. For Vancouver this holiday is […]
One Hundred Poets in Person (and Online)
One of our most dazzling collections is the One Hundred Poets. Originating from the personal collection of Professor Joshua Mostow of the UBC Department of Asian Studies with material largely from the Edo-period (1615-1868), and currently the buzz around it is heating up. While our metadata is pretty comprehensive – check out the information on this […]
Behind the Scenes: Digitizing the RCMP
Here at DI we occasionally get special orders for digitization. Every once and a while the orders are for pretty exciting stuff. Recently we got an order to digitize an illustrated poster from the 1970’s about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Canada currently stored in the vaults of Rare Books and Special Collections […]