Assessing microfilm digitization vendors

Vendor candidates

HTC Inc.
- Recommended by HLSL.
- Films are sent to India.
Creekside Digital (located in Glen Arm, MD)
- Lyrasis partner
Backstage Library Works

Characteristics of sample films

Includes handwriting
Includes printed text
Includes multiple titles
Includes splices

Imaging Services' orders for microform digitization services will have the following characteristics:

Digitization of entire reels or entire fiche-sheets.

Specifications

image format
TIFF / 8-bit grayscale / uncompressed / embedded sGray ICC profile

OCR format
ALTO, UTF-8 encoded

directory structure and file naming

image files: [document id]_####.tif

ocr files: [document id]_####.xml

directories: [document id]

Example:

└── 990009660700203941
    ├── 990009660700203941_0001.tif
    ├── 990009660700203941_0001.xml
    ├── 990009660700203941_0002.tif
    ├── 990009660700203941_0002.xml
    ├── 990009660700203941_0003.tif
    ├── 990009660700203941_0003.xml
    ├── 990009660700203941_0004.tif
    ├── 990009660700203941_0004.xml
    ├── 990009660700203941_0005.tif
    ├── 990009660700203941_0005.xml
    ├── [...]
    ├── 990009660700203941_9999.tif
    ├── 990009660700203941_9999.xml

Test film for microform scanning vendors

Camera master (1N)
Reduction ratio: 12
Multiple sonic splices
Includes 4 works to be named and arranged as follows, using JOB NUMBER or document name and 4 digit sequential number:

├── 05_2907_01
    │   ├── 05_2907_01_0001.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_01_0002.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_01_0003.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_01_0004.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_01_0005.tif
    │   ├── [...]
    │   └── 05_2907_01_9999.tif
    ├── 05_2907_02
    │   ├── 05_2907_02_0001.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_02_0002.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_02_0003.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_02_0004.tif
    │   ├── 05_2907_02_0005.tif
    │   ├── [...]
    │   └── 05_2907_02_0025.tif
    ├── 82_4897
    │   ├── 82_4897_0001.tif
    │   ├── 82_4897_0002.tif
    │   ├── 82_4897_0003.tif
    │   ├── 82_4897_0004.tif
    │   ├── 82_4897_0005.tif
    │   ├── [...]
    │   └── 82_4897_0025.tif
    └── index_cards
    	├── index_cards_0001.tif
    	├── index_cards_0002.tif
    	├── index_cards_0003.tif
    	├── index_cards_0004.tif
    	├── index_cards_0005.tif
    	├── [...]
    	└── index_cards_0009.tif