Did you know that UC Libraries’ Digital Collections & Preservation Librarian, James Van Mil, and Digital Imaging Coordinator, Sidney Gao, have recently created a website and blog to share their digital collections documentation? No? Well, head on over and check it out: https://uclibs.github.io/digitization-workflow/ It covers all their hard work establishing UCL’s digital collection strategy, selection guidelines, accessibility standards, and so much more. As they continue to work to create a more robust and thoughtful digitization and digital preservation program for UCL this site will continue to evolve and grown and they will share their progress along the way via the blog.
In their very first blog post they tackled the important subject of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and accessibility. Sidney shared their results from a recent experiment to see which OCR software performed the best under six document tests. They employed and tested six OCR softwares, some of which are proprietary and some that are open source: ABBYY Finereader for Mac, Google Cloud Vision, Tranksribus, Equidox, Adobe Acrobat Pro, and Tesseract.
Here is a preview of the six documents that Sidney and James tested:
Test One
Test Two
Test Three
Test Four
Test Five
Test Six
To see how these six OCR softwares performed and how they stack up to their competitors, head on over to their blog and check out their results: https://uclibs.github.io/digitization-workflow/2020/08/07/ocr-comparison.html James and Sidney do plan to conduct further OCR tests in the future, so make sure to subscribe to their site in order to receive notification when they share the results from the next round.
If you have any direct questions for Sidney or James, you can find their contact information here.
Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Photographic Documentation Specialist (in working with Sidney Gao [UCL] – Digital Imaging Coordinator)
After nearly 5 months of working from home, Preservation Lab staff are finally returning to the Lab and to UC’s campus in a very safe and limited way. In mid-March, like most of the country, UC Libraries and the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library shut down, forcing staff from both institutions to pivot and begin working remotely. After many months of webinars, research, model making, box making, some general collections treatment, and a whole lot of Microsoft Teams meetings and town halls, both institutions are beginning to open back up and offer some services. Luckily for the Lab staff, throughout this period of solely remote work, our UCL co-manager and Preservation Librarian, Holly, would make weekly or bi-weekly runs to the Lab to pick up materials we might need while working from home. We would then schedule our contact-free pick up of requested materials with her. The whole process ran rather smoothly and got us by for many, many months.
Since the Lab is located on UC’s campus, in Langsam Library, the Lab follows UC’s procedures for Returning to Campus. The preparation for returning to the Lab involved a workplace assessment of the space, a phased plan for returning to the Lab (which was vetted and approved), mandatory COVID-19 training, daily wellness checks, mandatory facial coverings, and social distancing.
Jessica and Catarina, all masked up, during one of their first shifts in the Lab.
The Preservation Lab’s plan to return includes the use of a cohort system to reduce exposure and better aid in contact tracing, if needed in the future. For the month of August, two cohorts would go back for 3 to 3 ½ hour shifts, one day a week. For example, cohort #1 consists of Catarina and myself while cohort #2 consists of Kasie and Holly. Cohort #1 goes into the Lab on Monday mornings, while cohort #2 goes in Friday mornings. While working in the Lab, our focus is on production and treatment – this means that we are either actively treating special collections items or working to evaluate, measure or prep materials to take home for treatment or housing.
Catarina working on special collection materials from third party client Conner Prairie.
Catarina working on special collection materials from UC Libraries’ Classics Library.
Materials evaluated and prepped for split board bindings to be done at home by Kasie.
Materials evaluated and prepped for split board bindings to be done at home by Jessica.
We’ve also made slight adjustments to our workspaces so that staff can stay as distanced as possible while they work. For example, Catarina has moved to our student staff bench area since she and I, under normal circumstances, are benchmates and work right across from each other. I don’t think Catarina is minding having all this space to herself to spread out and work on multiple projects at once while she’s in the Lab.
In anticipation for this exciting and overwhelming change – going from working from home for over 4 months and basically living in quarantine to going back into the Lab and onto campus with another human being, while wearing a mask the whole time – we made thoughtful decisions regarding shifts and breaks. We only work 3 to 3 ½ hours at a time and we take individual breaks once an hour in our outdoor space just outside the lab.
Our little jungle oasis, just outside the Lab.
A place where we can go outside, take off our mask, have a snack and breathe some fresh air.
We each have dedicated sanitation supplies to make sure we disinfect before, during and after our shifts. We also decided that we would dispose of our own garbage at home, in order to further restrict access to our floor from non-Lab staff members, like housekeeping. Langsam Library, where the Lab is located, is also using a channel on Microsoft Teams to check-in and out while you are in the building. This not only let’s you know who else is in the building with you, who you might come across while in certain parts of the building (for example, the restroom), but will also give us a fairly accurate record to present to any contact tracing efforts in the future, if needed.
Overall, I think our approach to returning to the Lab has been a thoughtful and cautious one. From UC’s COVID procedures (wellness checks, facial coverings, social distancing, etc.) to our use of the cohort system and the small adjustments made to our workflow and setup, I feel very safe returning to the Lab and very fortunate to have the time/space to prep materials to take home.
Jessica and Catarina wrapping up their shift by sanitizing and taking their garbage with them – while also wearing their masks and distancing!
We are looking forward to expanding our plan in September to possibly include another cohort. Until then, make sure to check out our Instagram (@thePreservationLab) where you can see all the things we’re working on remotely and in the Lab.
