mircofilm digitization

[Pat Warren]

Hi all,

Anyone who's interested in the digitized sources I've got can certainly get
cds. Right now, no text is available. A brief list was in my last email.
And all I can currently offer is plain images with out the web page
navigation, except for Iapi Oaye, which is the first one complete in the
new format (only for Internet Explorer 6.0 for pc). In the next few months
I'll have the web pages functional again. Right now I'm converting
everything from hardcoded html to xml, and creating better bibliographies.
When that's done I'll bring in some of the full text versions and start
asking people to share full text versions they have so they can be
included.

All the stuff I'm doing is open source and free, and I want it to
eventually, once the infrastructure and programming is in place, to be a
collaborative project. Like with the Dorsey film, I'd be happy to the
digitization of the film to make the images available. I gladly welcome
such challenges, and it would be much easier to get the film from one of
you than going to Maryland or waiting many months to purchase an overpriced
duplicate. And I can test the ocr process to see how well it works with
that particular source (I'm somewhat sceptical about the quality of
handwritten documents from microfilm).

Ultimately I like to do digitization of images from whatever sources
myself, or train people to do high quality transfer from microform or print
to digital image. And then I'd like to do ocr work myself or train people
there too. Then I want to put ocr results out there for other people to
proof when they have time or interest, and continually offer updated
versions based on whatever people get done. And once full text versions are
available I'd like to do very detailed xml coding of them so they can be
integrated into larger web-based datebases of linguistic and cultural data,
e.g. so comparative dictionaries can be autmatically created depending on
the sources you select, and searchable or sorted however you like.

I hope some others find the possibilities of this stuff exciting. When you
start using the kind of digitized materials I've been working with on my
computer for the last two years, I think you'll all realize some things are
really about to change.

Pat