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University of Washington Libraries

Digitizing the Collection

Photograph Scanning

The Museum of History and Industry and University of Washington Libraries photographs were scanned from the original prints whenever possible. Some images were scanned from copy prints. Images were scanned using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL and saved in .jpg format. Images smaller than 8"x10" were scanned at 600 dpi, and photographs equal to or larger than 8"x10" were scanned at 400 dpi. Color negatives were created for images in rare bound material in the University's collections, scanned on an Agfa Duo Scan flatbed scanner, and saved in .jpg format. The creation and scanning of the negatives was done by the University of Washington's Classroom Support Services. Images were edited using Adobe Photoshop.

The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture images were scanned from slides using a Nikon LS-2000 slide scanner and saved directly as .jpgs.

Text Scanning

Text was scanned using several methods and scanners. The text was not converted or encoded.

All Indian Commissioner reports were scanned from bound volumes using a Minolta PS 3000 scanner and saved in .gif format. Grayscale scanning was not available from Minolta at the time we did the scanning. We attempted to compensate for the curvature of the bound volumes and, in some cases, cross graining of the paper or narrow inner margins to get the best possible scan.

With some of the Indian Commissioner reports it was difficult to get good scans because of paper foxing, holes in the paper from perforations of library stamps, or other paper defects and faint type impressions. All of these factors, plus the fact that the scanner we were using only does one-bit scans, impacted the quality of the scans. Blank outer margins were cropped and the images edited using Adobe Photoshop. Images are one-bit bitonal .gifs scanned at 400 dpi resolution with lossy compression. Because grayscale scanning wasn't possible some spots in the paper are darker in the scan than in the original page.

Users should be aware that there are some pagination errors in the original text of the Indian Commissioner Reports; e.g., in the 1856 volume p.210 is numbered "10" and page 221 is numbered "21", and in the 1857 volume p.318 is numbered "218". Inked date corrections in the original text have been retained in the scanning where they couldn't be cropped or where there was a correction of a typo in the original text. (see e.g. 1863 p.461)

The Indian treaties were scanned at 600 dpi. Text printed on colored paper was scanned at "millions of colors"; otherwise it was "256 shades of gray". A flatbed Microtek Scanmaker 9600L was used and the scans saved in .jpg format. Pagination includes the title page and blank verso of the title page. The blank versos of the title pages were not scanned. The text of the Nisqually treaty has some bleed though because the paper it is printed on is so thin.

Preservation Resources, Bethlehem, Pa., a division of Online Computer Library Center, microfilmed and scanned the UW Publications in Anthropology. Blank pages weren't scanned even though they may be in the page sequence. The UW Publications contain a few very poor quality reproductions of photographs. The scanned photographs are thus of a very low quality. Bitonal .tiff files were scanned at 600 dpi and are Group IV compressed. The derivative .gif files were created from the corresponding .tiff, are 2-bit and constrained to a width of 600 pixels.

For the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, when possible, scanning was done using unbound issues on a flatbed scanner. Unbound issues were scanned in the University of Washington's Classroom Support Services using an Agfa Duo Scan flatbed scanner. Articles in bound volumes of the Pacific Northwest Quarterly were scanned using the Minolta PS 3000 at 400 dpi. Images were saved as .gif files and edited with Adobe Photoshop.


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