I've started my work in the digitisation studio in Special Collections. Here, library material is photographed or scanned to enable it to be more visible and accessible to the public. This material includes unique items from collections, images of which are put online or on touchscreen booths in the library, and material for courses, as well as any requests from customers, who can buy the image files.
The first thing I realised was that - erm, ok - they don't have giant cameras. They have normal-sized cameras suspended on a metre-rule over a 'copy stand', like this chap here. Or they have scanners, if the object will fit in there. The team are really busy at the moment scanning online course readings for the university - I really feel for them, as it seems very boring and takes four weeks to get done. However, they've also been showing me some wonderful illuminated manuscripts that they're working on; they might digitise several or all pages.
I’ve just finished photographing my
two sets of nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints. I've been told these will most likely stay in Leeds rather than going to London, but I kind of expected that and understand the arguments for keeping them - such as giving northerners and our Japanese Studies students a chance to see them. I’m hoping, though, that an online presence will raise awareness of the university’s
ownership of these prints, so that they don't remain hidden in the stacks.
The digitisation team use a
range of cameras, scanners and equipment in order to accommodate objects of
different types and sizes. I used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera to photograph the Japanese prints. The prints were lit from
either side by lamps that emit the minimum heat. Connecting the camera to a
computer meant I could use software to view the object under the lens and to fine-tune
aperture and shutter speed to achieve the optimum focus and level of
brightness - this was really cool. My embarrassing mistake, though, came when I thought it would be a good idea to take the initiative to push the lens upwards to get the print in shot, rather than moving the camera upwards on the metre rule. I'd forgotten (or just didn't know) that this doesn't just move the lens backwards, it changes the focus, so changes the brightness. When I came out with a bunch of photos of varying tones, I had to confess. So I guess my inexperience with cameras has been revealed... The supervisor was nice about it though, and once I cropped the photos, they looked more similar than they had done, so I got away with it.
The software let me really zoom in
on small details on the print, so I could aim to get even the tiniest fibres in
focus. It is important that the object is as well aligned as possible; this
involves a lot of tiny nudges and much close attention! Setting up the shot
can be painstaking, but once you have achieved it, it does not take long to
photograph many objects of the same type. This meant I could finish work on
both sets of prints – 22 prints in total – fairly quickly.
After photography, I moved on
to post-production. For this I used Photoshop Lightroom, a program that allows
you to organise and retouch large numbers of images and also view the images everyone else is working with. Here I cropped my photographs
and made sure each set was in the right order. The images were now ready to be
'ingested into our digital repository', whatever that involves - someone else is going to do that part! Provided I've got everything right, you'll be able to view them next week on Special
Collections’ online search facility - I'll add a link when they are live.
(Urrg, the spacing on here has gone funny but I can't be bothered to sort it out. Spent enough time squinting at small details on screens!)
