LIS 7410 - Digital Libraries
Spring 2011 -- Section 01
Homework Assignment 4 (Professional Track)

Digitization sampler

This is an individual assignment. The purpose of the assignment is to guarantee that you have hands-on experience of scanning and reformatting images, so it is not allowed for one person to scan some images and then copy them to another person for this exercise.

Images can be taken from photographic prints, or from a printed book, or from any other material. Modern digital photographs are not acceptable. Be cautious of copyright issues. According to the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, and for works of corporate authorship, 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier. If you use family photographs for this exercise, for security reasons, omit your mother's maiden name, or give her an imaginary maiden name.

You need to size the scanned images correctly and systematically, using a relevant photo editing software (such as Photoshop and Corel Draw). Adjust the dpi of the images to relevant levels; typical numbers for dpi (and standard sizes) will be addressed in the lectures.

Corel Draw can be downloaded for free from Tigerware in your PAWS account. In the "Virtual Lab" provided by the university, both Acrobat Professional and Photoshop, as well as a number of other Adobe software products are available. Anyone can access these and the other available options thusly:

1. Click on 'Tigerware' on your logged in PAWS desktop
2.  At Tigerware home, click on 'Student Virtual Lab,' under Quick Links on the right
3.  Enter LSU user name and password (same as PAWS login)
4.  Double click on desired software to launch

Use Photoshop to create access and thumbnail images: PDF.

Tutorials on using Photoshop Actions to create thumbnails and access images will be posted on Moodle.
Many tutorials on how to use Photoshop and Corel Draw are available on the Web, e.g.,

• What are photoshop actions?
  Photoshop actions: 124+ Free Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Designs http://www.visual-blast.com/photoshop/124-free-photoshop-actions/.
• Using Actions to Generate Thumbnails for the Web http://www.larry-bolch.com/thumbnails/ (This step - click "Image" tab -> "Image Size" is not shown on the Website).
• Create Thumbnail Using Adobe Photoshop http://learngen.org/resources/leobjects/lg0001ta.html

To meet the minimum requirement of 3 thumbnails and 3 access images, you must upload a minimum of 6 different images. The images will probably be in JPEG (or JPG). It is not acceptable to use HTML size instructions (e.g., width="75" height="150") to make an image appear as a thumbnail in one context, and an access copy in another. Note that JPEG is not an ideal format for text doucments, although I accept JPEG for this exercise. You may play with other formats (such as PNG/GIF, PDF+OCR).

The filenames of the images should distinguish clearly and consistently between thumbnails and access images. Filenames must also be systematically applied. For example, if you have a pair of images about Lincoln, you might want to name them as lincoln_thumb.jpg and lincoln_access.jpg. In other words, name the images in a way easy for human beings to tell which is the thumbnail, which is the access image, and whether they are a pair.

You can either hand-code the digitization sampler Web page/site or use an HMTL editing software (such as Dreamweaver). Name your digitization sampler Web page as hw4.html, and make a link from your course Web site (i.e., 7410.html) to hw4.html. Include a clear descriptive title on your Web page(s). If you have short notes for the instructor, present them directly on your hw4.html Web page/site. If you have long notes, write them down on a separate page (e.g., readme.html) and make a link from your hw4.html page to this page. If you include metadata that can only be seen by using "View/Source," indicate that clearly in the notes.

The quality of presentation of the materials is a relevant factor in grading, so please organize your hw4.html Web site/page well. The above satisfies minimum requirements and proves that every individual student is capable of creating a minimal system.

For additional credit, you can do the following extra work:

• add additional metadata; cite the source of the metadata;
• add additional images, either more of thumbnail / access images, or if you wish, present thumbnail / access image / high quality archival image sequences. Do not use .tiff or other very large archive-style files for this assignment in order to avoid the insufficient disk space problem. Typically you have only 100MB quota on your SLIS server account although it can be increased upon request. This means, for this assignment, you can use JPEG with a higher resolution as a replacement for TIFF. Note that, in the real scenarios, TIFF is actually an appropriate archival format for image and text documents.

This can be an independent assignment; there is no requirement to coordinate the content with that of later assignments. But content used for the Digitization Sampler can be incorporated in the Sample Digital Library when appropriate.

Grading guidelines:

• meeting minimum requirements: +92. This means 3 thumbnails + 3 corresponding access images, appropriate file format, file naming, and good organization of images.
• adding more thumbnails/access images: +2.
• adding thumbnail/access/archival chains: +2.
• adding metadata (using HTML META tag or DTD/XML/XSL): +4.

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