Under the Assumed Name of "Desk"

Today I managed to scan all of the Salem Historical Photos into Feynman. I'm currently working on editing all of them in Photoshop. 13 more photos to go! I had to go to Rose Marie a couple times to decipher the writing on the back of the photographs. The final photograph in the collection BeefCattle.jpg has a peculiar note on the pack from an owner of a mailing table that he uses as a desk. It is entirely irrelevant to the picture of cattle grazing on the front. In addition to this notice, there is "Ratz!! See?" written in bold, red ink. I'm wondering what inspired these notations.

I did have some trouble editing out the white reflection in Eagle_Rock_or-Crooked_River.jpg The white, smoke-like coloring appears in the bottom right corner of the picture on the digital copy but not on the original. This appeared again in The_Deschutes_River_Canyon.jpg. I might just have to re-scan them. Overall, a productive day, rats and mailing tables aside.

First Day of Work

Today I started my job as the Digitization Assistant in the Hatfield Library. Sean taught me how to scan photos and yearbooks on "Feynman" the Plusteck Opticbook and demonstrated how to scan negatives and large photos on "Gregor" the Epson Scan. I also learned how to crop the photos and managed to scan and edit 2 photos for the Salem History project and scan 3 additional photos. I plan on working on the Wallulahs after I finish the Salem History archives project. It was a very interesting first day filled with a lot of information. It's a little overwhelming at first but I'm excited to be working here this semester.

August 22, 2013 - "Mission... Completed?"

As today is my last day, it is fitting that I spent the majority of it working on the Wallulah. I finished scanning and editing the 1931 Wallulah and took care of a quick project from archives in the morning. I also took advantage of the delicious blueberries and cookies in the break room that Sara brought (Thank you by the way, they were delicious!).

In the afternoon, once I finished the 1931, I was just about to begin scanning the 1932 when Rose Marie brought me a large stack of photographs to be scanned (assuming I wouldn't finish by the end of the day). I've scanned a chunk of them, but sadly, I'll have to leave the rest of the pile to the next intern. It will actually be a perfect little project to get the new intern used to Feynman and doing individual photos from archives. I will probably use the photos while training the new intern.

I also updated the info binder to ensure the new intern isn't completely in the dark with an old set of instructions.

Thank you all! It was a very pleasant summer working here in the digital cavedom. Fortunately, we won't have to say goodbye as I will still be working in the same building once school starts again!

August 21, 2013 - "Feynman: The Great Explainer"

Today, I worked solely on scanning/editing the 1931 Wallulah.

I stepped out at about 10:15a to rehearse music for convocation on Friday. I returned at 11:30a.

I also had a conversation with Sara about the yearbook and how the cost of one could be significantly reduced if copies were published digitally rather than physically. It definitely sounds like something worth looking into.

Also, I have decided to rename the scanner. "Matt" is my roommates name, and I used it as a temporary/fail-safe name because I couldn't think of a better one. At the very least it was funny, but I have decided on a new one. From henceforth the Plustek Opticbook Scanner shall be known as "Feynman" after Richard Feynman, a hobbyist physicist who managed to explain to physicists how particles behave using diagrams. He was a more impressive educator than physicist and broke down immensely complicated mathematical and scientific phenomena to much more simple understandings that more people could grasp.

Tomorrow, in the morning, Shanel is going to steal me for a little bit of time, so I won't be working on digitizing right away.

August 20, 2013 - "Drobo's Revenge"

Today, I worked primarily on the 1930 Wallulah and managed to finish scanning and editing it.

There was some work going on at my computer to attempt to update Drobo software, as it had been giving the mac users some trouble. I'm not sure if the attempt was successful, but if not, I suppose we'll be at it tomorrow.

Sara wanted me to try a software that came with the scanner that showed promise to make the scanning workflow a little bit more efficient. I gave the software a test run (with plenty of mistakes) and found that it could potentially reduce workflow a little bit by deskewing and cropping images, but there were two problems: photoshop would still be needed for certain editing processes because it is faster and the other program lacks certain editing options, and sometimes deskewing, rotating, and cropping images sometimes went pretty badly, and after a few bad scans, I gave up and went back to the older software.

I also did a short project from Rose Marie containing two postcards and a photograph (I forgot what the term for it was).

Tomorrow, I'll continue with the 1931 Wallulah.

August 19, 2013 - "Fateful Dusk"

Today, I started the day fruitless-ly toiling with Photoshop CS6 on the student terminals on the first floor to see if I could process TIFs to JPGs. It's really difficult because the image processor doesn't let you change the dpi, and trying to make a batch resulted in the program saving the files as TIFs instead of JPGs. Rather than trying to figure this out, I abandoned the project to scan the 1930 Wallulah.

I received the 1913 Wallulah from Sara to rescan some pages that needed to be changed. I also got started on the loose negatives and photos from the VMS/Paulus collections. I couldn't find the photos because I don't believe they were actually ever scanned, so I scanned them to the VMS collection, housed them, and put them in their proper place up in the archives.

After this I continued working on the 1930 Walluluah. Tomorrow I need to add metadata for the VMS photos I scanned, edit one scan from the 1913 that I forgot to edit, and continue with the 1930.

August 15, 2013 - "Bold, Brave, Boron"

Today, I continued working on the 1929 Wallulah and finished it. Thus, I have finally finished with the 1920s and we can consider the last two decades (with the exception of jpeg, review, etc) tackled. I also started the 1930s, so hopefully I can make some headway into that before I leave.

I also received and finished a scanning project from Mary of various Willamette History materials as well as a photo from the political display.

Next week, I will start getting the loose photos/negatives from the Paulus Collection back in their rightful place. I'll also work on the Wallulah, and possibly the letter scanning project Mary had.

August, 14, 2013 - "Cleaning Pizza"

Today was clean up day, and in the midst of scanning the 1929 Wallulah, I was informed of this and aided in the clean up of the digital cavedom.

Following this, I was given a stack of papers to be scanned and OCR'ed for Mary.

The rest of the day was spent on the 1929 Wallulah, and tomorrow, in addition to this, I will be converting other Wallulahs to JPEGs on computers throughout the library, starting a letter scanning project from Mary, and hopefully finishing finding photos in the Paulus collection.

August 13, 2013 - "Wild Yeast"

Today, I finished scanning and editing the 1928 Wallulah. It can now be converted to jpg for review. I still don't quite know how I would convert them, because I would end up not being able to use my computer for a while when the files are undergoing conversion. Granted, it's not super necessary because the next intern could always review them as I work on scanning more.

I also started the 1929 Wallulah, and tomorrow, I will continue with this.

August 12, 2013 - "twelve"

Today, I worked mostly on the Wallulah. I began by finishing editing the 1927 Wallulah, and then I began scanning and editing the 1928 Wallulah. Sadly, the book is ever so slightly larger than the scanner, so I have been more careful when scanning to ensure I don't crop out important bits of the yearbook.

I also printed out the Vernor Martin Sackett spreadsheet to turn in to archives. Thankfully, this wasn't too difficult, or paper hungry.

Tomorrow, I'll continue with the 1928 Wallulah. Hopefully, I'll make it through the 20s by the end of the week!

August 8, 2013 - "Frursday"

Today, I spent the first half of the morning scanning and editing the Wallulah. I noticed that I am quite a bit faster editing on the computer in the digital cavedom. I think the slow processing power on the computers outside end up taking more of a toll than I thought on time.

The second half I spent mostly scanning and editing various sports photos for hall of fame-ers that I believe the athletics dept wants. That went fairly well, though it was hard to gaussian blur out a lot of the dot prints without making the images incredibly blurry.

Next week, I'll finish editing the 1927 Wallulah (I've already scanned it all), and work on the next Wallulah or potentially any new projects. I don't know how I'll convert things to .jpg for review, because I don't have elements. I could do some batch stuff in photoshop, but I don't want to lock up my computer!

August 7, 2013 - "Severly Impaired Deer"

Today, I spent the majority of the day rehousing photos from the Vernor Martin Sackett Collection. I had to redo one of the binders in which the negatives were a little exposed at the top, but while doing it, I noticed that there were several negatives that weren't scanned and placed in the same spot as a similar photo (I assume that they were thought to be duplicates; they weren't). I also scanned, edited, meta-data-ed, and housed these folks as well.

The remainder of the day I spent on the 1927 Wallulah.

Tomorrow, I'll continue with the Wallulah, but I will be given a large scanning project by Mary that may consume a lot of my day(s).

August 6, 2013 - "Montoco"

Today, I worked on scanning and editing the 1927 Wallulah, and instead of going to a computer around the library, I decided to use the one in the digital cavedom with photoshop CS3.

I also received the necessary housing materials to house the rest of the VMS collection! I've done most of it, but there is a box with negatives housed in polypropylene sheets that are a little too small, so I'm going to redo them tomorrow and finish labeling the rest. I will do that tomorrow.

Finally, Bill got up and running the new computer, and I will also soon have two monitors up and running for photoshop/youtube glory! Also, doing things while the Epson scanner Gregor is running should be easier.

Aside from the VMS collection, tomorrow, I will work on the 1927 Wallulah more.

August 5, 2013 - "Tunneling"

Today I scanned/edited the 1926 Wallulah, but didn't have time to edit the very last 10 pages. I will do that tomorrow.

I also reviewed the 1925 Wallulah for errors.

Here's the latest of my cat space related drawings (there are two others that I haven't posted, so it's right in the middle of the story)

August 1, 2013 - "Cat Spaceship"

Today, I began working on the scanning and editing portion of the 1926 Wallulah and made pretty reasonable progress. I will continue this next week, where I will most likely finish (scanning that is).