Monday

Today I figured out how to convert all my edited jpegs into tiffs. I'm always a little embarrassed when it takes me so long to figure this stuff out, mainly that it takes me so long to google the answer myself.

File>Scripts>Image Processor

Still waiting on ABBYY. apparently the wait has all been due to some signature technicality. Hopefully the fix works!

The Week

Wilbur Collection:
I didn't spend a lot of time on the Wilbur letters this week. The names list and the places list are put together, but the places list is not indexed yet. I still need to make a subject list and index that and I also need to index the type of source list. There are still some documents that have not been transcribed. But I think we can start putting some of it online.

Wallulahs:
I spent more time with the Wallulahs this week. There is still something weird with the software that won't let me convert the jpgs or pdfs to tif files. So right now, everything I've scanned is in jpg and pdf form, and only the jpgs are edited. Once I figure out the software issue, I'm pretty sure I can just insert the edited jpgs into the book editor software to convert to tifs. I also realized that the scanner doesn't always correct for moire in the images. Some Wallulahs didn't need to be fixed, but others needed to have each image filtered/blurred to fix the moire. I still check each image for all the Wallulahs, so the editing isn't really a problem, but it is still necessary. Other than that the Wallulah project is moving quickly. The Wallulahs are at least scanned up to 1959, and edited up to 1949. I can scan a few books a day depending on what other projects or research I'm doing.

ABBYY:
I never heard from Sara about that licensing issue, so no progress there this week.

Food:
I would like to thank whoever brought in those Mickey Mouse shaped coconut and chocolate cookie things. Those were wonderful and I ate a lot of them. Also, Mary brought us cupcakes today and they were amazing and it was so nice and it was the best surprise and thank you so much!

Thoughts on Wilbur Collection

In no particular order:

1. This collection is super old.
2. I'm really glad we have standardized spelling.
3. We have Abraham Lincoln's signature.
4. What Wilbur is doing in Oregon and Washington is racist and horrible.
5. Everyone basically describes Wilbur as a saint but I don't know if I buy it.
6. No one uses Lucretia Wilbur's first name.
7. I wish Wilbur had used more first names.
8. Reading all this makes me depressed for everything we did to the Native Americans.
9. I'm glad Wilbur kept such amazing records.
10. There's a lot more transcribing that needs to happen.
11. Manually indexing all this makes my eyes hurt.
12. I still need to reprint transcriptions on acid-free paper.
13. Are texts like the new telegram?
14. How did Wilbur's daughter die?
15. I wish Wilbur had kept a journal while he was working as Indian Agent.
16. Sarah Winnemucca seems pretty cool.

Abbyy Update

Georgia got through verifying the whole 1906/1907 Wallulah, but said that there may have been some issues. I guess some pages repeated themselves and she says it seemed like other pages were missing. But she finished what was left in the verification station.

I opened up the indexing station and I got the same "internal program error" that we have been getting soooo the problem seems to still be there. We'll see if there are any changes tomorrow.

In other news, I scanned three Wallulahs today! Then I kept working on the Wilbur Collection. I emailed Mary about a book from the Whitman archives that I would like to borrow for a little bit to do more research about Wilbur.

I scanned two Wallulahs on the yet-to-be-named scanner. Both times, the software crashed in the middle of scanning, so I just started a new project each time and picked up on the page where it crashed. I'm not sure at all what is causing the crashes. I'll do more research about how to fix that tomorrow. The scans turned out great though. It took about 30-45 to scan the yearbook, from setting up the cameras to exporting the raw jpgs. I haven't done any more editing on either of them. I'll probably to do that tomorrow.

The second half of the day I worked on the Wilbur letters. The first folder of letters and transcriptions are ready to go up online. Sara and I agreed that as I do more of the detail archiving work I will add that the CONTENTdm and update as it happens.

Almost Done With the Wilbur Letters But Not Really

I am almost done putting the spreadsheets together for the Wilbur Letters.

But I think I need to go back and figure out some of the details I may have missed. I also need to come up with the official list of names and the official list of subjects that will be used. Then I need to figure out if all the transcriptions have been matched. I think at that point then we will need to decide if I will finish the transcriptions or if I should move on to a new project. I'm thinking my last step will be reprinting everything on acid free paper. Or if there is something else I'm not sure what it is.

The Wilbur Update

Sara, Mary, and I decided some things about the Wilbur letters today. So now I am creating the spreadsheets for each of the folders with all the info about the letters. From there we will see if anything else needs to be transcribed. If so, and depending on how much, we might do that at a different time. I'll also print the transcriptions on acid free paper.