Week 2 (Sept. 8-Sept. 15), Assignment 2

Digitizing Images and Uploading them on Flickr

Here is the URL (I think) to my FlickR account. I will add more comments on the digitization process soon.

Flickr URL:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42354457@N07/sets/72157622333487728/

Notes on the digitization:
I created this mini exhibit on the history of public transportation planning by Pittsburgh citizens in the early 1920s. I don’t have a car, and am often frustrated with public transport options, so I am always interested in learning about people's suggestions for improving public transport in the past. Usually, these suggestions never materialized. So, I found this report in the collections of the university library and scanned it based on the guidelines – master images scanned at 600 dpi. I used greyscale for the text images (much better than B&W photo) and color image for the diagrams. I then used photoshop and reduced the image size twice and created an image for the screen and an image for the thumbnail, and saved both as jpgs. I then uploaded it to Flickr and added tags and comments – it was the first time I created a Flickr account, so it was all new to me. I thought I was the first one to digitize the report, but as it always happens when you think you are the first, you are certainly not. I found out that the report had already been digitized as part of the Historic Pittsburgh Collections. So much for being the pioneer digitizer.
Some notes and problems: What struck me when creating the master image was how big the image is when you create a really good scan (it was exceeding 100 MB’s). This is a pretty big file, and so this is indicating the space problems on your hard drive or storage unit that you encounter if you make really high quality scans. And drive space costs money. So, with limited money and hard drive space, you can definitely not save everything.
I also had some problems with writing the tags for Flickr. Flickr always combined my key words into one big word, so it looks really strange, like: 60yearsbeforethesubwaytherewasaplan. Weird, isn’t it?
Also, I wasn’t sure if it is possible to actually arrange the thumbnails where they belong (at the first page of the exhibit in Flickr). Instead, all my thumbnails are showing up as part of the images that are part of the exhibit and Flickr is creating its own thumbnails. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Reading Notes
I was roughly familiar with the story of Linux, but it was interesting to read the story how it evolved as a spin-off from UNIX, and has been developed as an open source software ever since by a large group of programmers. It was also interesting that Linux programmers became more user friendly over time. I still find it difficult to understand, though. Can you just install it on a windows machine? I browsed through the Mac OSX/Linux article (I suppose we are not supposed to read these technical pieces line by line), and what struck me was Singh's critical, but dispassionate position toward windows as a client computer and his acknowledgement that most people use windows, not the least because it is cheaper than Mac. The update on the windows roadmap reads like a promotion piece – everything is moving forward, steadily improving, if you only trust microsoft!
Overall, the readings about the different operating systems highlight that compatibility is a huge problem – compatibility between older and newer operating systems, and also compatibility between mac and windows – I am not sure about Linux. It also creates a lot of practical problems if you work at a place that has both macs and pcs – at the archives where I used to work we often had to transfer multimedia files back and forth between windows and macs, which was not always easy.

Muddiest point
The lectures were all very clear; I don’t really have a muddy point. I am just generally wondering about the implications of the constant development and updates of hardware for libraries and archives – should libraries keep versions of old hardware models (f.e. 268 PCs with 5 ¼ inch floppy drives) so that they will be able to read files on old floppies that may contain important files and re-emerge one day?


Comments
I am a little unclear on this, but are we supposed to document where we have left comments?
I commented on Kristine Harveux-Lundeen's blog:
http://2600kristineharveaux-lundeen.blogspot.com/
And on Letisha Goerner's blog:
http://letishagoerner2600.blogspot.com/