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Paper presented by Ross Coleman, University of Sydney Library at the 2nd National Preservation Office Conference: Multimedia Preservation - Capturing the Rainbow, in Brisbane, 28-30 November 1995.

In this session I will present an overview of the technical method and philosophy behind the Ferguson project - that is the hybrid approach. To set this in context I will need to give some background to the project

Ferguson 1840-45 is the short-hand description of the Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project, 1840-45 which recently received an Australian Research Council - ARC - research infrastructure grant for 1996. (Ferguson refers to Ferguson's Bibliography of Australia- the most comprehensive listing of titles published in to Australia prior to 1900)

This is a collaborative project between four core partners - the University of Sydney Library, the State Library of NSW, the National Library of Australia and Monash University Library. At the outset I would particularly like to thank Alan Howell and Alan Ventress of the State Library of NSW and Colin Webb of the NLA for their work and assistance in putting together the successful submission

The purpose of the project is to provide the large-scale digital conversion of serials and fiction published in the period 1840-45.

The project submission had wide support - running briefly through the names they included the State Libraries of South Australia and Victoria, libraries at the Universities of Western Australia, Adelaide, Deakin and the Australian Defence Forces Academy, the National Preservation Office, the National Centre of Australian Studies, the Macquarie Dictionary, and the multimedia firm Discovery Media. Many of the libraries have offered access to their collections for the project.

The project has academic and technical advisers from nine institutions, including Cornell and Yale University libraries. Collectively, these represent an extensive pool of support and expertise to ensure the success of the venture.

The main elements of the project are probably best described in the ARC submission summary:

This project will create a unique research infrastructure in Australian studies through the digital conversion of Australian serials and fiction of the seminal period 1840-45. It will ensure access to, and preservation of, this material by a process of microfilming, scanning and networking. The first project of its kind in Australia, it will introduce international best practice, act as a technical benchmark, and provide a new level of resource sharing
"This project will create a unique research infrastructure in Australian studies through the digital conversion of Australian serials and fiction of the seminal period 1840-45. I will briefly cover matters of content of the project later....but a feature of the project is that it is intended as large-scale conversion of textual material - distinguished by the focus on serials, both journals and newspapers".
"It will ensure access to, and preservation of, this material by a process of microfilming, scanning and networking ... the hybrid approach".
"The first project of its kind in Australia ... a major collaborative project with a focus on preservation and access".
"it will introduce international best practice ... we will be drawing on the advice and experience of the Cornell and Yale projects".
"act as a technical benchmark ... in this sense we will investigate standards which will assist the development of digital collections, and support government "superhighway" policy".
"and provide a new level of resource sharing ... opens direct network access to material confined to a few large research libraries through a collaborative process and model".

The success of the submission is a recognition of digital collections as academic research infrastructure.

It is also worth emphasising that as an ARC infrastructure project matters of content and the needs of the scholarly community are paramount and central to the design of the project - the end user/client focus is fundamental to the project, that is, it is about getting the front-end right.

While various Ferguson projects have been discussed for some years, the impetus for the project in its present form came from the first National Preservation Conference in 1994 - particularly the papers given by Anne Kenney [1] from Cornell.

The content of the project was refined through several discussions with a focus group of scholars in nineteenth century Australian studies. There was immediate consensus on the target period as 1840-45 - a seminal period which witnessed the emergence of an Australian colonial culture and identity, and marked by an upsurge in local publication. They were also emphatic on the need to do this as a block exercise - to do all titles in the period rather than be selective.

The decision to focus on serials followed testing of a small sample of books from the Mitchell which highlighted a number of physical problems. Serial literature was recognised by the focus group as an important untapped primary source, and had been identified as a priority area by the NLA. Fiction was added to the project following the interest of the National Centre of Australian Studies at Monash to develop fully-searchable text of nineteenth century fiction.

Seventy-five serial titles were identified as having commenced in the period 1840-45, but only six of these continued publication after 1855, the general cut-off date for the project. Four works of fiction were also identified from the period.

The project is a true collaboration in which the partners are working jointly together, each contributing to the project for a successful outcome. Each participant brings particular skills and interest to the project, and has general areas of responsibility throughout the project. All will benefit by acquiring technical and management skills. Common issues for all participants include content, preparation, design, technical production and conversion, user focus and broad management issues.

Technically the project is based upon what is described as the hybrid approach - the dual process of microfilming and digitisation which provide long-term preservation and digital access as an integrated process. It is an approach that recognises the needs of present and future scholars for primary material of the nineteenth century.

The strength of the hybrid approach, for the purposes of this project, is that it is a proven, relatively simple, integrated method which maximises options - through both microfilming and digitisation - to meet the varying needs of both the users and the custodians of the material.

The hybrid approach is a sound proven method for digital conversion and preservation. I believe that this was a fundamental reason for the success of the ARC submission.

A number of aspects illustrate the options and strength of the method.

The first - though not part of the technical process - relates to the original material.

Concern about the physical integrity of the original materials was raised early in academic feedback on the project. This had become an issue in the US primarily through criticism of various Commission of Preservation and Access sponsored re-formatting projects where originals - brittle originals - were discarded after re-formatting. The main critic of these projects was Thomas Tanselle who described them as "the latest form of book-burning", and where the physical objects become "the sacrificial offerings in the name of textual preservation"[2]. While the tone of the criticism was quite rabid the substance did strike a chord.

These concerns culminated, earlier this year, in the Draft Statement on the Significance of Original Material [3] by the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of the Print Record, chaired by Tanselle. This recommended means for the retention of the physical integrity of originals in re-formatting projects.

This issue highlights the distinction between "replacement" and "surrogacy" raised by Nancy Elkington. This project is looking towards conversion as a form of surrogacy, ie to deflect casual use of the originals.

Given that the bulk of the material in this project is relatively scarce the physical integrity of the originals was also a matter of concern and attention. This concern, to an extent, drove the decision to film then scan.

Put simply there are two models of the hybrid approach. The Cornell University Library model which is to scan first and then produce film from the digital images, and the Yale University Library model which is to film first, then scan from the film. These complementary models have become benchmark projects which have generated important information on standards, comparative costs, and techniques. Anne Kenney and Paul Conway, the coordinators of both these projects respectively are technical advisers to the Ferguson project.

In this project we are following the Yale model, which best fits the extensive experience in Australia with preservation microfilming, and will provide the kind of production throughput that this project will need.

The importance of microfilm in the hybrid approach is that it provides a stable format, with a known long life (variously estimated from 200 - 500 years). It is computerindependent, and accessible via lens-based hardware. It can be used as a source for remastering and or redigitising throughout its life. It does not need repeated intervention or refreshing for maintenance.

Filming is a proven and established method, with reliable vendors and established standards. It is a known and familiar production process, and is the most appropriate in regard to the integrity of the originals. During this stage, three silverhalide sets will be created (a master negative, a duplicate negative and a positive copy).

This digitisation process is planned as a relatively high speed process where digital bitmapped images of each page will be scanned from the duplicate negative microfilm at approximately 400dpi, 8bit greyscale (these standards may be reviewed during implementation of the project). This level of resolution and greyscale is sufficient to capture all significant detail in the printed materials. This will involve the production of c.150,000 uncompressed TIF digital files. Compressed files will also be created using compression algorithms, such as JPEG or equivalent.

Like microfilming, this aspect of the project is envisaged as a production process to be carried out to set technical and quality specifications by existing commercial vendors. it is in our - the collecting institutions - interests to have a viable and high standard commercial sector to provide for the production requirements of projects such as these. Technical standards are not as well established as with microfilming, so specifications will need to be set and agreed upon early in the project. The advice and experience of projects in Australia and in the US will greatly assist in developing these specifications.

The key technical aspect of the project is the specification of the document control structure or architecture for these digital images. Ease of access at the front-end of this database is central to the success of the project.

Simply, this involves tagging the images with identifying information so that it can be located quickly when requested. The images will be indexed into a document architecture that retains the original structure in a form that is accessible and searchable across networks. The specification of this design will rely on standards in document definition (such as the Berkeley Document Type Definition) and testing and feedback from academic advisers.

The design of this document structure is the most challenging aspect of this project - more so because the project is concentrating on serial literature which will require a different kind of structure and sense to that for books.

The network platform for the project will be provided through an NLA server. Redundancy include optical storage at SLNSW, and, as distribution contingency and perhaps as an on demand product, CD-ROM

An extension of the hybrid approach will be enhancement of the digital images through OCR translation to provide full-searchable ASCII text. This process will be pursued for the four works of fiction identified from the period, and will take place at Monash. It is envisaged that both the image and the ASCII text will appear together on the product. This will facilitate electronic textual analysis in parallel with the bitmapped images.

The project aims for the creation of an electronic collection or corpus of nineteenth century source material to minimum standards that will enable researchers to access, search, and download material to be enhanced as they see fit for their particular purposes. In this sense this is an "open" project, not restricting use of digitised material by technical restrictions or technical over-sophistication. This is particularly appropriate for serial literature where different sections (eg prose, letters, poetry, news, articles, advertisements) may be used in many different ways . This is also a recognition of the needs of different types of users such as historians, linguists, literary scholars.

So, this is quite an ambitious project. The philosophical basis is classic access and preservation. To provide scholars access, and the opportunities to investigate and enhance primary source material irrespective of their location and in a form that can be manipulated. To provide to future scholars and the custodians of these resources sound and stable means of preservation, not for the next five or ten years, but the next 100 or 200 years.

The hybrid approach provides all these options.

References:

  1. Kenney, Anne. 'From Analog to Digital: Preservation Reformatting in a Changing World'. Preservation microfilming, does it have a future - Proceedings of the First National Conference of the National Preservation Office, at the State Library of South Australia, 4-6 May 1994. Canberra. National Library of Australia, 1995
  2. Tanselle, Thomas. 'The Latest Forms of Book-Burning'. Common Knowledge, v2 n3 Winter 1993, p172
  3. Modern Languages Association, 'Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of the Print Record. Draft Statement on the Significance of Original Material'. MLA Newsletter. Spring 1995, p4


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Last updated 27 February 1998