Case Study: Arts and Social Sciences Digitisation Project

Credit: JISC Digital Media

The Arts and Social Sciences Library at the University of Bristol undertook to centralise the digitisation of published course material held on its shelves in order to make key subject texts available to a wider range of students, whilst staying within the terms of its Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) licence.

Whilst improving its learning and teaching credentials by enhancing students’ ability to access vital published material, the project also enabled the Library to gain increased organisational efficiency through the centralised management and monitoring of the process.

Rationale/motivation

The Library recognised that, for many of its key course texts, the book to student ratio was quite low. In contrast, digitisation of the texts and delivery via a Virtual Learning Environment (within the terms of the CLA licence, which limits the amount  of pages captured per specific purpose to five per cent or one chapter, whichever is the greater)offered an effective way of providing wider access to relevant sections of a given book.

Furthermore, any previous digitisation had been carried out on an ‘ad hoc’ basis by the teaching staff and, whilst this was normally carried out within the terms of the licence it was difficult for the library staff to monitor the process effectively.

Objectives

In light of these challenges and opportunities, the aims of the digitisation project were therefore defined to:

• increase and encourage access to the key texts
• reduce demand on the limited number of physical books
• ensure compliance with the CLA licence; and
• audit the digitisation for the annual report to the CLA

In order to achieve these aims, it was essential that the chosen method of digitisation was easy to use, with the operator able to capture a section of a book in a repeatable way and with a minimum of fuss or technical knowledge. 

The digital images only had to be of sufficient quality for screen/online delivery or low resolution print and no specialist handling was required since the books are of little historic or material value.

Solutions

While traditional flatbed scanners are capable of scanning bound volumes, the process is slow and inefficient and can damage books. In addition, using this method means it is not always possible to capture detail deep in the gutter between pages.

Dedicated book scanners, on the other hand, are designed to support the book in a more natural position, placing less strain on the spine. Some models are even supplied with specialist software which can reduce image distortion due to the curvature at the centre of the book.

Even now, these types of book scanners are still quite specialist devices and can range in price from several thousand pounds for a simple greyscale model to tens of thousands for a large format, high-resolution colour system.

The Arts and Social Sciences Library therefore engaged the JISC Digital Media team’s expertise to help it review and select the appropriate equipment to meet its needs, opting eventually for the greyscale e-Scan book scanner made by I2S.

Benefits

This I2S product delivers images of the quality required by the Library as well as a user-friendly touch screen interface.

The users of this scanner can employ a range of simple solutions for keeping the pages flat during the scanning process, including using flat metal bars and elastic bands (see image).

The original pages, which normally consist of text and simple diagrams are then easily captured as greyscale images and stored as PDF files which can then be uploaded straight onto Blackboard, the university’s VLE, access to which is controlled by the course staff.

While it is possible to connect this scanner to a network, at the time of writing the Library has opted to use the scanner in isolation whereby scanned documents are saved to USB devices and then loaded onto a networked PC for optimisation and delivery.

The price was a major factor in choosing the scanner and the I2S offered one of the more affordable models on the market whilst still fulfilling the requirements of the brief.

For example, higher specification book scanners normally have integrated lighting systems, which are important for colour-critical work. However, for the greyscale images the Library required, this was not deemed to be a necessity. Instead, the chosen model makes use of the available ambient lighting and an orange panel behind the scanner which ‘bounces’ coloured light back onto the book (see image 1).

Support from JISC Digital Media

In addition to helping the library select the appropriate hardware to meet its needs, JISC Digital Media also provided support on how to use the equipment to digitise and provided software training such as how to use Adobe Acrobat Professional to convert captured images into PDF files and, potentially, to convert scanned text into readable type (OCR) (although the Library is not doing this at present).

While the project is now well underway the scanner may be relocated shortly and JISC Digital Media may be consulted on setting up the scanner in a new location with appropriate neutral decoration and subdued lighting to optimise the quality of the output.