Archives
The Seamen's Church Institute
seamenschurch.org
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| Introduction to the Project The primary objective of the Seamen’s Church Institute (“SCI”) Archives digitization project is to make publicly accessible selected materials from the collection that collectively document SCI’s history as the largest and most comprehensive mariners’ agency in North America. Project History The project began in March 2010. A team consisting of an Associate Archivist and a Digitization Assistant scanned and cataloged materials over the next nine months. The project (still ongoing) went online in January 2011 with over 12,000 digital items. Content Selection Items to be digitized were selected based on three criteria: 1) How well does the item document SCI’s activity for the particular time period in which it was created? 2) How unique is the item? Is the item likely to be available anywhere else? 3) How well does the item fit into a larger group or series of items? By evaluating the collection based on these three questions the six series of the Digital Collection were determined: 1) Annual Reports; 2) Minutes; 3) Photo Scrapbooks; 4) Photographs; 5) Chaplain’s Journals; 6) The Lookout. Digital Images Annual Reports, Minutes, Photo Scrapbooks, Chaplain’s Journals and issues of The Lookout were scanned page-by-page at 300 dpi using either an HP Scanjet 8200 or Epson GT-1500 with Adobe Acrobat 8 as the scanning software and saved as color JPEGs. Using Acrobat, the JPEGs were merged into a single file and saved as a PDF. For Annual Reports and issues of The Lookout, text recognition was performed on the saved PDF with OCR for US English. Pages of Photo Scrapbooks were scanned and saved as TIFF archival masters. Derivative access files were created by saving the archival master TIFF files as JEPGs. The JPEGs were then merged into a single file and saved as a PDF using Acrobat. Before August 31, 2010, Photographs were scanned at 300 dpi using an HP Scanjet 8200 scanner and Adobe Acrobat 9 as the scanning software. Photographs were saved as JPEGs. After August 31, 2010, photographs were scanned at 300 dpi using an Epson GT-1500 scanner and Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Windows as the scanning software. Photographs were saved as high-resolution JPEGs. Derivative access files were created from the high-resolution images using the Image Processor in Photoshop with a quality level of 5, and the following rights statement was embedded into each image: “Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) is providing access to these photographs for educational and research purposes. Responsibility for determining copyright status of and securing permission to use an item rests with the person desiring to use the material.” Photographs were edited to exclude negatives and duplicates. In addition, every image created, including textual material, was vetted for copyright restrictions. Photographs not in the public domain or for which SCI does not hold copyright were not uploaded. Textual material in copyright was redacted in Adobe Acrobat 8 and saved as a JPEG. A new PDF was then created with the redacted material, and text recognition was performed on the document with OCR for US English. Nonetheless, the nature of archival material can make determining copyright status difficult or even impossible. In these instances, the digitization team had to make decision based on little or no information. Each situation was evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with the aim of striking a balance between the rights of information creators and the needs of researchers. Content Description Content was described with Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). The six series of the collection are further expanded upon, up to three times, as sub series → file → item. Annual Reports, Minutes and The Lookout are physically contained as bound volumes, with each volume comprising a file. Within a file, each issue comprises an item. Photo Scrapbooks are physically differentiated by date range, and their description within Eloquent at the file level reflects this. Photographs are divided into subjects and described at the file level. Chaplain’s Journals are arranged by creator into sub series. Multiple files arranged by date exist within each sub series. Dates are further defined in the item level descriptions within each file. Publication Eloquent Systems is SCI’s collection management software system for the Digital Collection. The Collection is stored on Eloquent’s server where it is securely backed up by Eloquent Systems. Additionally, content is backed up on two mirrored hard-drives that are kept in-house at SCI. Eloquent supports Boolean logic and researchers can search by one or more of the following access points: titles, keyword, subject, proper name, year of creation and level of description. A finding aid for the Digital Collection was created and published on SCI’s website. |