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Digitization Of Materials

Many types of projects require converting analog material to digital formats. We have expertise in digitization and are knowledgeable in digitization standards. Contact us for consults regarding your independent projects or collaboration opportunities.

File Naming Tips

  • Use underscores, hyphens or capital letters to differentiate between words in the file. Do not use spaces or special characters > < * ? = \ / |  
  • Keep file names concise and use meaningful abbreviations
  • Order elements from general to specific and consider how the files may sort in a directory.
  • Record dates YYYYMMDD

Suggested Digitization Specifications

 

Media Type  Digitization Specifications
Books/Typed Pages (≥5”x8”) 300 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Smaller sized books (<5”x8”) 450 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Manuscripts/handwritten documents (≥8”x10”) 300 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Smaller sized manuscripts (<8”x10”) 600 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Photographs  600 ppi, 24-bit RGB color 
Slides (black and white) 2400 ppi for 35mm slides, 16-bit grayscale
Slides (color) 2400 ppi for 35mm slides, 24-bit RGB color
Film Negatives or Transparencies (black and white) 2400 ppi for 35mm film, 16-bit grayscale
800 ppi for 4”x5” originals, 16-bit grayscale
Film Negatives or Transparencies (color) 2400 ppi for 35mm film, 24-bit RGB color
800 ppi for 4”x5” originals, 24-bit RGB color

File Formats

The Randall Library Digitization Unit primarily creates TIFFs as the original master file and generates access files, JPEG and PDF. We also work with audio, video, and many other file formats.