June 16

Today was my last day before I leave for 3 weeks to go back home. I wasn't able to fully complete 1931 like I'd hoped but I only have 60 pages left. The software isn't recognizing much of the text so typing it all in has slowed me down a bit.

I also scanned some pages that were missing or skewed from the 1957 Wallulah, which have been placed in the appropriate folders. I had forgotten to go back and look through 1964 after I added the re-scanned images yesterday so I reviewed it again and it looks to be complete.

June 15

Today I finally finished re-scanning and editing all the cut-off pages from the 1964 Wallulah and updated the spreadsheet. I resumed processing the 1931 Wallulah through ABBYY and I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow and start on 1932.

ABBYY Resurrected

On Thursday I started by continuing to re-scan and edit pages of the 1964 Wallulah whose page numbers had been cut-off in the original scans.

Bill called ABBYY and they were finally able to fix the software. It's worked without a glitch for several hours and it may be my imagination but it even seemed to be able to read the smaller text on the student pages better.

I finished the batch that had been in the Verification Station and then went back to the scanning 1964 because I'd like to finish that as soon as possible. I'm still processing 1931 Wallulah but since the software is reading text better it should go even quicker.

I won't be in to work tomorrow since I made up my hours from missing Monday by staying late the last couple nights. Next week, I'll only be here on Monday and Tuesday since I'm flying home Wednesday and I'll be back the week of July 6.

June 10

Today I finished reviewing the the 1962 and 1963 Wallulah. The page numbers in the 1964 are on the inside of the binding so they're partial or missing on many of the scans. There were a considerable number of skewed pages as well. I'm currently in the process of re-scanning the 60 or so pages whose page numbers were cut off and editing them.

June 9

Today I continued to review the 1962 Wallulah. Several of the "Living Area" pages with pictures of students in their respective residence halls were cut off so I re-scanned them. 1962 seemed to have more skewed and cut off pages than 1961 but after I finish editing the newly scanned pages it should be complete.

June 5

Today I started by reviewing the Wallulahs again, which I will be doing next week as well unless the ABBYY software is fixed. I finished 1961 and started on 1962, however I was asked to do some scans so I wasn't able to make anymore progress.

Since the scans were of paintings in art books, I tried to use The Beast, which I haven't had a lot of experience with. The glass was a little dusty so I tried to clean it with Windex but it left streaks. I was able to get them mostly off with water.

Afterwards, I was able to get everything focused and working properly, however the right page (left camera) was always significantly lighter than the other. The pictures also looked a little dusty/blurry even though I had focused the cameras. I'm not sure if these were calibration/set-up issuse or because the glass was not entirely clean. Shanel said she had a microfiber cloth so I'll try to use that to clean the glass on Monday.

In the end, I decided to use Feynman so I could scan them at a higher resolution which worked well since it captured the detail in the paintings.

The ABBYY Debacle

On Thursday I started work on processing the 1931 Wallulah, however an error message kept coming up from Windows and the software would close. I spoke with the vendor Harold on the phone who found the problem listed in the program "Event Viewer." However he didn't know what was wrong or how to fix it so he is passing the issue along to ABBYY, the manufacturer. He couldn't give an estimate for how long it will take to be fixed but he said he would contact us with information either through phone or respond to the original email. We can also contact him directly if we'd like an update on the issue.

Although I had to try a couple times to reach Harold, someone named Steve called the Digital Kingdom phone and said he'd received two calls from the digitization number. I wasn't sure if he was connected to the ABBYY software inquiry but he wouldn't tell me what company/organization he was with and his number was not one of the ones I had dialed. The whole interaction was very strange.

Since I wasn't able to work on processing the text on the Wallulahs, I started to look for skewed pages on drobo. I started with 1961 and have found quite a few so far but they only require minor adjustments in Photoshop. I've been replacing the old images with the edited ones. I'll be in tomorrow from 8:30-1:15 in order to make-up hours from when I missed a day the first week of work soI can continue to review the Wallulahs.

June 3

Today I finished the 1930 Wallulah and started on 1931. I re-processed the three pages from 1928 Wallulah and placed them back in their respective Temp folder on drobo. The Scanning Station re-named all the files "page #" so I corrected them to match their original file names.

I also noticed it had changed the format of the 1929 and 1930 Wallulah file names from the original "Page_#" format. Should this be corrected?

June 2

Today I continued working on the 1930 Wallulah and only have 40 pages left to process. I also scanned a library floorplan and a picture of Rogers Hall for the Bill Willingham collection. I was able to enlarge the library floorplan, however the picture of Rogers Hall remained pixelated even with editing.

June 1

Today I finally finished the 1929 Wallulah. The index pages at the end of 1929 slowed me down a bit, but I've definitely got the hang of it now, as I was able to also complete at least 1/3 of 1930 Wallulah which I will continue working on tomorrow.