Technical Aspects of the Digital Collection

Image Capture and Conversion

Capture of all image files adhered to the standards promulgated by the Cornell Department of Preservation and Conservation. (see Digital Imaging for Library and Archives, Kenny and Chapman, 1996)

TIFF masters were the original capture format. Electronic archive masters are uncompressed TIFF files at 100% scale. Manuscript materials were scanned at 300 dpi, 8 bit grayscale with approximate file sizes for the archive masters as follows:

• Confederate Pension Applications: 6.5MB
• Grand Jury Presentments: 8.2MB

Photographic materials were scanned at 200dpi, 8 bit grayscale with the approximate file size for the archive masters as follows: Insurance School Photographs 2.3MB.
The TIFF images were then used to create JPEG derivatives in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 using a batch executable process. The resulting JPEG images were resized to a width of 550 pixels to 650 pixels and the height resized accordingly.

Capture Software and Hardware

Epson Expression 1640XL flatbed scanner was used to capture all materials. All of the images were captured by and processed on an IBM PC compatible workstation using Windows 2000 operating system, a Pentium III processor, .5 GB RAM, and a 37 GB hard drive. Derivative image creation and final quality control was performed using Adobe Photoshop 6.0.