The Yale Daily News Historical Archive
The Digitization Process
Digitization services for the project are provided by Digital Divide Data, a non-profit company based in New York City. Digital Divide not only supplied the best test samples during the vendor selection process, but also serves as an outstanding example of socially responsible international commerce. Company employees in Cambodia and Laos develop critical job skills and receive training in business practices so that they can qualify for more advanced positions or launch their own businesses following their apprenticeship at Digital Divide.
The digitization process is a truly global operation distributed among Digital Divide’s partners and staff. The Library ships printed copies of the YDN to Ottawa, Canada for high-resolution scanning at Brechin Imaging. Background discoloration is removed from the resulting page images to improve readability on the screen and the quality of printed output. Images are delivered in lossless JPEG 2000 format (300 ppi, 8-bit, high-contrast grayscale, or 24-bit color). The digital images are then sent to Hamburg, Germany for post-processing by Content Conversion Specialists using docWORKS software, including optical character recognition and production of page layout information. Word positions, article boundaries, document structure, and OCR output are encoded following METS/ALTO standards. Finally, cleanup work (such as verification of article boundaries) and quality control checks are performed by staff in Cambodia. The digital files are then shipped to the Library and loaded on a server at Yale where the CONTENTdm software provides the interface that enables searching and display of the newspaper.
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