Bruner Project Scanning Procedures Spring 2000

Project Basics:

The Bruner Project is comprised of three basic steps:

1. Scanning the physical documents to create archival TIF files
2. Converting those archival image files into usable formats for display.
   (See Converting Images Using PhotoShop.)
3. Using the image files and html markup to create web pages.

This section focuses on Step 1: scanning the physical documents.
These instructions are designed with the novice in mind and outline basic scanning procedures for the purposes of this project.

1. Scanning
2. File Transfer to the UNIX server

Scanning

Turn the scanner on. It is important that the scanner be turned on BEFORE the PC is powered up. Open DeskScan II Place the paper document in the scanner. Align the document in the upper right hand corner. Do not worry about orientation as the documents can be rotated later. (Note: Large documents may need to be scanned in pieces and 'reassembled' later.) Click the PREVIEW icon. Crop the previewed image. Because you may not wish to scan the entire document, the marquee tool allows you to select only a specific portion of the page to be included in the final scan. Since file size is a concern, we want to cut out unnecessary portions of the document. However, do not crop so much that the document appears "chopped up" or "crowded." Select Image Type from the drop down menu: sharp b/w drawing sharp b/w photo sharp millions of colors (See Scanning Standards to determine the proper scanner settings.) Click Custom -- Print Path from the drop down menu and select the appropriate dpi. Click OK. Click the to automatically adjust the brightness and contrast of the image. Click Final. The "save as" dialog box will appear. Assign an filename -- [file name].tif -- and save it to z:/bruner. Be sure to save it as a TIF 5.0 (uncompressed). Note: See the Bruner Project File Structure for standards on naming the image files. Click OK. The final image will be scanned to the computer's Z:/ drive. Repeat Steps 3-12 until all pages have been scanned.

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File Transfer to the UNIX Server

WS-FTP95, is the software used to transfer the archival image files from the c:/ drive of your computer to the UNIX server. Open WS_FTP95 from the desktop. There is an FTP profile for direct access to the Bruner UNIX account. Click on that profile and enter the password. The remote host is the Bruner UNIX account. The local system is your PC. The WS_FTP95 software will allow you to move around within the subdirectories of both the local system and the remote host. Find the file you wish to move on the local host. Remember that it should be in z:/bruner. Find the destination directory on the remote host. Entries from 1995 are in the ../images/tiff/ directory; 1997 entries are in ../images/tiff97/ ; 1999 entries are in ../images/tiff99/ ; and so on. Again, see Bruner Project File Structure for more information on the file structure and naming standards. Within the appropriate tiff directory, create a new subdirectory for the entry you are working on. All of the image files from that entry will be transfered into this subdirectory. (Try to pick a directory name that describes the entry - this will allow for ease in navigating through the maze of files.) Back to the local host. Highlight the file you wish to transfer and click the appropriate arrow. Transfer may take a while, since TIF files are quite large. The progress of the transfer should be displayed. Note: Because these are very large files you may experience problems with file space on the server. If there is not enough room for the file you are attempting to transfer, an error message "disk quota exceeded" will be displayed. Please inform the scanning coordinator, so that systems-end file maintenance can be performed. Close WS_FTP95. Click on the CRT-Telnet icon on your desktop and connect to the library's server, elmwood.lib.buffalo.edu. Logon to the Bruner UNIX account. (See the coordinator for userID and password.) An alias has been established so that you need only type bruner [enter] to access the Bruner project directory. Find and assign the proper read-write-execute permissions to the files you just FTP'd. You will use the following UNIX commands: cd [directory name] - changes directory chmod 774 [filename] - assigns permission to a file chmod 2775 [directory] - assigns permission to a directory Close UNIX after assigning permissions to all of your image files. If you are unsure of whether or not permissions have been assigned, type the command ls [enter]. Permitted filenames will be followed by an "*". You can also type lg [enter] for a listing of group permissions. Check Netscape to ensure that the files "really are" in the correct directories and that they are accessible. If you cannot access them from Netscape, then permissions may not have been correctly assigned. The files should be at the following URL's: 1995 entries: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/bruner/tiff/[entry]/[filename].tif 1997 entries: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/bruner/tiff97/[entry]/[filename].tif 1999 entries: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/bruner/tiff99/[entry]/[filename].tif After file transfer is complete, and appropriate permissions have been assigned, delete the file from your PC's z:\ drive. TIF image files are very large and the file space available for storage on a PC or network drive is finite. Storing too many large TIFs may actually affect the speed and efficiency of the machine.

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the archival scanning portion of the project.
Once the images are enhanced and mounted on the Bruner Project website, the archival TIF files will be moved from the library server to cd-rom.

The next step in the Bruner Project involves converting the archival TIF images into more usable (not to mention much smaller) .gif and .jpg files. See Converting Images Using PhotoShop.

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