* Because OJCCT is not yet on line, it is difficult to know how many people would simply browse through the journal on the screen as opposed to downloading the whole thing and printing it out; a mix of both types of users likely will result.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PERSONIUS * Developments in technology over the past decade * The CLASS Project * Advantages for technology and for the CLASS Project * Developing a network application an underlying assumption of the project * Details of the scanning process * Print-on-demand copies of books * Future plans include development of a browsing tool * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lynne PERSONIUS, assistant director, Cornell Information Technologies for Scholarly Information Services, Cornell University, first commented on the tremendous impact that developments in technology over the past ten years—networking, in particular—have had on the way information is handled, and how, in her own case, these developments have counterbalanced Cornell's relative geographical isolation. Other significant technologies include scanners, which are much more sophisticated than they were ten years ago; mass storage and the dramatic savings that result from it in terms of both space and money relative to twenty or thirty years ago; new and improved printing technologies, which have greatly affected the distribution of information; and, of course, digital technologies, whose applicability to library preservation remains at issue.
Given that context, PERSONIUS described the College Library Access and Storage System (CLASS) Project, a library preservation project, primarily, and what has been accomplished. Directly funded by the Commission on Preservation and Access and by the Xerox Corporation, which has provided a significant amount of hardware, the CLASS Project has been working with a development team at Xerox to develop a software application tailored to library preservation requirements. Within Cornell, participants in the project have been working jointly with both library and information technologies. The focus of the project has been on reformatting and saving books that are in brittle condition. PERSONIUS showed Workshop participants a brittle book, and described how such books were the result of developments in papermaking around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The papermaking process was changed so that a significant amount of acid was introduced into the actual paper itself, which deteriorates as it sits on library shelves.
One of the advantages for technology and for the CLASS Project is that the information in brittle books is mostly out of copyright and thus offers an opportunity to work with material that requires library preservation, and to create and work on an infrastructure to save the material. Acknowledging the familiarity of those working in preservation with this information, PERSONIUS noted that several things are being done: the primary preservation technology used today is photocopying of brittle material. Saving the intellectual content of the material is the main goal. With microfilm copy, the intellectual content is preserved on the assumption that in the future the image can be reformatted in any other way that then exists.
An underlying assumption of the CLASS Project from the beginning was that it would develop a network application. Project staff scan books at a workstation located in the library, near the brittle material. An image-server filing system is located at a distance from that workstation, and a printer is located in another building. All of the materials digitized and stored on the image-filing system are cataloged in the on-line catalogue. In fact, a record for each of these electronic books is stored in the RLIN database so that a record exists of what is in the digital library throughout standard catalogue procedures. In the future, researchers working from their own workstations in their offices, or their networks, will have access—wherever they might be—through a request server being built into the new digital library. A second assumption is that the preferred means of finding the material will be by looking through a catalogue. PERSONIUS described the scanning process, which uses a prototype scanner being developed by Xerox and which scans a very high resolution image at great speed. Another significant feature, because this is a preservation application, is the placing of the pages that fall apart one for one on the platen. Ordinarily, a scanner could be used with some sort of a document feeder, but because of this application that is not feasible. Further, because CLASS is a preservation application, after the paper replacement is made there, a very careful quality control check is performed. An original book is compared to the printed copy and verification is made, before proceeding, that all of the image, all of the information, has been captured. Then, a new library book is produced: The printed images are rebound by a commercial binder and a new book is returned to the shelf. Significantly, the books returned to the library shelves are beautiful and useful replacements on acid-free paper that should last a long time, in effect, the equivalent of preservation photocopies. Thus, the project has a library of digital books. In essence, CLASS is scanning and storing books as 600 dot-per-inch bit-mapped images, compressed using Group 4 CCITT (i.e., the French acronym for International Consultative Committee for Telegraph and Telephone) compression. They are stored as TIFF files on an optical filing system that is composed of a database used for searching and locating the books and an optical jukebox that stores 64 twelve-inch platters. A very-high-resolution printed copy of these books at 600 dots per inch is created, using a Xerox DocuTech printer to make the paper replacements on acid-free paper.
PERSONIUS maintained that the CLASS Project presents an opportunity to introduce people to books as digital images by using a paper medium. Books are returned to the shelves while people are also given the ability to print on demand—to make their own copies of books. (PERSONIUS distributed copies of an engineering journal published by engineering students at Cornell around 1900 as an example of what a print-on-demand copy of material might be like. This very cheap copy would be available to people to use for their own research purposes and would bridge the gap between an electronic work and the paper that readers like to have.) PERSONIUS then attempted to illustrate a very early prototype of networked access to this digital library. Xerox Corporation has developed a prototype of a view station that can send images across the network to be viewed.
The particular library brought down for demonstration contained two mathematics books. CLASS is developing and will spend the next year developing an application that allows people at workstations to browse the books. Thus, CLASS is developing a browsing tool, on the assumption that users do not want to read an entire book from a workstation, but would prefer to be able to look through and decide if they would like to have a printed copy of it.
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