About this course
Welcome to the course on publishing digital images! In our current digital age, editors rely heavily on digital images of historical documents to help interpret and analyze history. In fact, these digital images often serve as cornerstones of an online edition. Therefore, as you can imagine, integrating high-quality images into your edition is essential for producing an accurate and useful educational resource. But before you begin scanning a document, you’ll want to consider how best to go about producing a high-quality image. This course exposes you to important procedures you’ll need to consider when digitizing documents, equipping you to create images that enhance the ability of your audience to learn about and engage with your subject matter.
What you'll learn
- to plan and implement digital workflows.
- To track and manage multiple digital projects.
- To identify digitization standards.
- To apply technical specifications to digital projects.
- To organize files by incorporating file-naming conventions and folder structures.
Course Content
Guides
Contributors
Supervision
- Krista Tomaselli
Visualization
- Krista Tomaselli
Writing—Review & Editing
- Neel Agrawal
- Katie Blizzard
- Cathy Moran Hajo
- Russ Sprinkle
- Serenity Sutherland
- Krista Tomaselli
Course Glossary
- Access File
The access file is a derivative of the master file, produced by converting the master file to a smaller file format. Access files are suitable for presentation to researchers.
- Bit Depth
The number of bits used to represent each pixel in an image.
- Derivate File
A surrogate file created from the original master file.
- Deskewing
The process of rotating an image that has been scanned crookedly.
- Digitization
The process of creating a high-quality digital copy of your source material.
- Digitization Standards
A set of guidelines that governs the digitization of material and aligns them to industry specifications.
- Directory
A folder containing files.
- File Size
The amount of space a file consumes on a storage medium.
- Image Resolution
The level of detail portrayed in an image, measured in pixels per inch (PPI) or dots per inch (DPI).
- Master File
The master file is the original file, generally produced through scanning processes that attain a high-level specification. The master file is archived for long-term preservation.
- Workflow
A sequence of tasks concerning the movement of work through a stage or stages in the prepation of an edition. A practitioner may design and employ a variety of workflows to suit their needs, including cataloging or digitization workflows, a quality control or verification workflow, a publication workflow, and more.