Appendix E
Scanning and Work Flow

Article Scanning, PDF Conversion, and Image Quality Control

The goal of the scan-and-store portion of the project is to develop a complete and tested system of hardware, software, and procedures that can be adopted by other members of the consortium with a reasonable investment in equipment, training, and personnel. If a system is beyond a consortium member's financial means, it will not be adopted. If a system cannot perform as required, it is a waste of resources.

Our original proposal stressed that all existing scholarly resources, particularly research tools, would remain available to scholars throughout this project. To that end, the scan-and-store process is designed to leave the consortium's existing journal collection intact and accessible.

Scan-and-Store Process Resources

• Scanning workstation, including a computer with sufficient processing and storage capacity, a scanner, and a network connection. Optionally, a second workstation can be used by the scanning supervisor to process the scanned images. The workstation used in this phase of the project includes:

-Minolta PS-3000 Digital Planetary Scanner

-Two computers with Pentium 200 MHz CPU, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB HD, 21" monitor

-Windows 3.11 OS (required by other software)

-Minolta Epic 3000 scanner software

-Adobe Acrobat Capture, Exchange, and Distiller software

-Image Alchemy software

-Network interface cards and TCP/IP software for campus network access

• Scanner operator(s), typically student assistants, with training roughly equivalent to that required for interlibrary loan photocopying. Approximately 8 hours of operator labor will be required to process the average 800 pages per day capacity of a single scanning workstation.

• Scanning supervisor, typically a librarian or full-time staff, with training in image quality control, indexing, and cataloging, and in operation of image processing software. Approximately 3 hours of supervisor labor will be required to process 800 scanned pages per day.

Scan-and-Store Process: Scanner Operator

• Retrieve scan request from system

• Retrieve materials from shelves (enough for two hours of scanning)

• Scan materials and enter basic data into system

-Evaluate size of pages

-Evaluate grayscale/black and white scan mode

-Align material

-Test scan and adjust settings and alignment as necessary

-Scan article

-Log changes and additions to author, title, journal, issue, and item data on request form

-Repeat for remaining requested articles

• Transfer scanned image files to Acrobat conversion workstation

• Retrieve next batch of scan requests from system

• Reshelve scanned materials and retrieve next batch of materials

Scan-and-Store Process: Acrobat Conversion Workstation

• Run Adobe Acrobat Capture to automatically convert sequential scanned image files from single-page TIFF to multi-page Acrobat PDF documents, as they are received from scanner operator

• Retain original TIFF files

Scan-and-Store Process: Scanning Supervisor

• Retrieve request forms for scanned materials

• Open converted PDF files

• Evaluate image quality of converted PDF files

-Scanned article matches request form citation

-Completeness, no clipped margins

-Legibility, especially footnotes and references

-Minimal skewing

-Clarity of grayscale or halftone images

-Appropriate margins, no excessive white space

• Crop fingertips, margin lines, and so on, missed by Epic 3000 scanner software

-Retrieve TIFF image file

-Mask unwanted areas

-Resave TIFF image file

-Repeat PDF conversion

-Evaluate image quality of revised PDF file

• Return unacceptable scans to scanner operator for rescan or correction

• Evaluate, correct, and expand entries in request forms

• Forward corrected PDF files to the database

• Delete TIFF image files from conversion workstation

Notification to and Viewing by User of Availability of Scanned Article

Insertion of the article into the database

• The scanning technician types the scan request number into a Web form.

• The system returns a Web form with most of the fields filled in. The technician has an opportunity to correct information from the paging slip before inserting the article into the database.

• The Web form contains a "file upload" button that when selected allows the technician to browse the local hard drive for the article PDF file. This file is automatically uploaded to the server when the form is submitted.

• The system inserts the table of contents information into the database and the PDF file to the Rights Manager system.

Notification/delivery of article to requester

• E-mail to requester with URL of requested article (in first release)

• No notification (in first release)

• Fax to requester an announcement page with the article URL (proposed future enhancement)

• Fax to requester a copy of the article (proposed future enhancement)