Digital imaging using scanning technology is an exciting and rapidly evolving option that allows clear image capture, clean, high resolution printing and the ability to manipulate scanned files in the future without having to re-scan the original documents. Currently there are numerous scanning projects being carried out in various areas of the Emory libraries. The Preservation Office worked jointly with the Beck Center for Electronic Collection and Services and the Pitts Theology Library to digitize a collection of 57 sermons published on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. A commercial vendor scanned the documents using a Xerox DocuImage 620S 600 dpi greyscale flatbed scanner and created Group 4 TIFF format image files. Emory staff created metadata and text markup to facilitate use.
New technologies offer exciting opportunities.
The role of the Preservation Office is to help to evaluate the efficiency of adapting the new technology to insure long-term access to information. In so doing, many difficult questions are raised. In the course of working with the Lincoln sermons as a pilot project for digitization for preservation, the Preservation Office staff collected data to help in making decisions about which of a variety of options should be employed to serve our present and future community of users in the best way possible. Preservation Photocopying Brittle books are reproduced by creating a preservation photocopy of the original. The majority of volumes are disbound before copying to keep costs down.