Neogranadina: our first project

Built a scanner? Started to build a scanner? Record your progress here. Doesn't need to be a whole scanner - triggers and other parts are fine. Commercial scanners are fine too.

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Team Neogranadina
Posts: 3
Joined: 02 Jul 2015, 18:59
Number of books owned: 0
Country: England

Neogranadina: our first project

Post by Team Neogranadina »

Hello again! I am sorry that it has taken so long to report back but at last, after a very busy few months, we are delighted to be able to report that we are currently running a digitisation programme in the Archivo Central del Cauca in Popayán. The archive is amazing: not only does it contain a wonderful collection of early manuscripts, it also houses the library of the missionary college of Popayán so has many really spectacular early printed books.

We began the project on 30th July and Raul, the operator, has been scanning manuscripts and books ever since so we have been getting a constant stream of images. Everything has been working very well and we have been so impressed with Spreads. We would like to say an enormous thanks to Jonathon Duerig who helped us out so many times with our various Spreads related issues during the final tense weeks of our time in Colombia!

We ended up designing another machine because the large one, which is 68% bigger than a standard Archivist, was just too large and heavy to be operable. Although we think it will be really useful in future for scanning maps and broadsheets, at the moment it needs a lot of work to make it usable. It is just too unwieldy and unnecessarily large for the kinds of documents we are focusing on at the moment. Therefore we modified the designs again, this time building a machine that is 20% larger than a standard Archivist. This machine has been working wonderfully well and, fortunately, is exactly the right size for manuscripts.

Although we are delighted that we have been able to get started, we still have an awful lot of work to do. The first thing is to get the standard-sized Archivist running in Popayán because it will be much easier for scanning the smaller books. The problem was that although we took two machines to the archive, we only had enough cameras for one but we have since found more cameras and hope to get it working within the next few months. We also need to start processing the images and programming the platform so that we can display them. However this is likely to take a couple of years because the platform we are using is undergoing a major overhaul over the next year. More immediately however, we need to start fundraising so that we can carry on what we have started and begin digitisation programmes with the other archives we have been talking to.

If anyone is interested in seeing a more detailed narrative about the process, please visit our website: www.neogranadina.org, where blogs will be appearing over the next few weeks. Many thanks once again!
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