Libraries

Technical Specifications

Index, databases and display:

• Solr
• Lucene
• Tomcat
• Cocoon XML

Scanning and Digitization:

Scans for Peel's Prairie Provinces and similar projects are done within a range of accepted resolution and bit depths. Most of the scanning for Peel's Prairie Provinces and other projects is done through an outside vendor.

• Bitonal = 1 Bit, 300 DPI
• Greyscale = 8 Bit, 300 DPI
• Colour = 24 Bit, 300-600 DPI

Archival masters are produced and preserved as either TIFF files or in more recent work, JPG2000. Web-friendly derivative images are used for a better online viewing experience.

The METS/ALTO open standard is employed for use with Peel related digitization products. ALTO (Analyzed Layout and Text Object) is

...a XML Schema that details technical metadata for describing the layout and content of physical text resources, such as pages of a book or a newspaper. It most commonly serves as an extension schema used within the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Schema (METS) administrative metadata section. However, ALTO instances can also exist as a standalone document used independently of METS."
Source: http://www.loc.gov/standards/alto/techcenter/use-with-mets.php

The highly structured nature of the metadata and the layout of the scanned material allows for a rich discovery and viewing experience. For example, digitization of historic newspaper materials includes article segmentation (zoning), which allows for each article to be displayed and indexed independently as well as being discoverable and viewable within the context of the original page. Previous to the use of METS/ALTO, a proprietary Olive process was utilized; this is evident in some of the earlier digitized materials in Peel.

Materials are scanned from physical print collections as well as from microfilm and microfiche. Microfilmed materials are often of a poorer image quality than scans from paper materials, depending on the quality of the original microphotography process. Results are varied.