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| The Waldren Studios project's main goals in phase one were to digitize 3,500 - 4,000 photographs (photonegatives & prints), create web pages for each of them along with a search engine which would allow people to find images easily and efficiently. As well, the project sought to contextualize the photographs by providing research on the history of photography in Atlantic Canada and on the Pictou and Antigonish areas. Phase two added another 2,000 digitized photographs to the site as well as further historical information about nine locales frequently appearing in the collection. Additionally, the team added a map contemporary to the period represented in the photographs. Below you can find information about how we accomplished our goals, what hardware and software we used to create the digitized collection, and what kind of obstacles we encountered. |
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The main goal of the first phase of the Waldren digitization project was to scan approximately 3,500 glass photonegatives and create webpages for each of them in order to incorporate them into a larger website hosted by Industry Canada. Phase two, also supported by Industry Canada, expanded the number of digitized photographs to 5,500 and provided further contextual resources: community profiles as well as a map of Nova Scotia contemporary with the period represented in the photographs. We wanted to create an easily accessible site which brought the Waldren Collection to a vast number of people, since the collection illustrates an important part of Atlantic Canadian photographic history. The site was to include a search engine, browse lists and interesting information about both the history of photography in the area and the unique area itself. The 5,500 images selected (nearly 10% of the entire collection) were chosen on the basis of quality, interest and historical importance. While creating this website, the Waldren Teams also wanted to create a comprehensive database which catalogued and categorized all of the 45,000 images included in the collection, so they might be digitized at a later date. Our strategies for achieving all of our goals were mostly to digitize as many of the negatives as possible per day. The phase one and phase two teams operated similarly with the three main team members rotating jobs. Each member was thus able to experience all aspects of the project. Since the team members had a variety of backgrounds and strengths, we maximized our talents and made the project go smoothly. |
| At the Dalhousie University Archives, we made use of three PC Desktop Computers, a Canon S-100 digital camera, and two Hewlett-Packard scanners, the HP4470c and the HP7400c. |
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| Scanning At the beginning of Phase One the project, we had a single scanner which scanned well, albeit incredibly slowly. When our second scanner arrived, it scanned quickly but produced a far more detailed scan which picked up the dirt, damage and residue on the negative, making it unuseable. Nearly two days had to be spent tweaking the settings until it was able to scan useable images. By Phase Two these scanning problems had been sorted out, and we could set to work increasing the number of digitized images presented on the site. The original glassplate negatives themselves were often a problem, being either overexposed or dirty from their years in an attic, so producing usable scans was a challenge for both phases of the project. Many of the photonegatives were too large for our conventional scanners, so we had to send them out to Dalhousie Medical Media Services to be digitized and included in our site. Search Engine and File Management During Phase One, creating a workable search engine proved to be a problem, as we had to decide between the more acceptable "client-side" engine (meaning the process runs on the user's computer) or the faster, more reliable "server-side" engine (meaning the process runs on the server which houses the website). We opted for a server-side engine developed by the Dalhousie University Libraries' Systems Group. In future, however, we hope to make our entire Waldren database containing 45,000 photographic descriptions In Phase Two, the creation of several thousand static HTML pages has proved to be inefficient, especially when a simple change must be made to each of several thousand pages. To mitigate this problem Phase Two moved to Dreamweaver MX in order to generate templates for three content areas within the site (About the Collection, Project Description, and Site Map); however, this still leaves us with the majority of the pages—the photograph descriptions themselves—as static web pages when they would be far more easily managed if created "on-the-fly." Further developments of the project will likely include this alteration in file management as well as the addition of a means to search through our entire descriptive database of 45,000 Waldren Studios photographs. Research When writing the histories of photography and of the area as well as the community profiles, our researchers were stymied by a lack of detailed resources. We were aided in our pursuit by the staff at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia who assisted our search for G. R. Waldren's obituary and by the team members' intrepid sleuthing and co-operative spirit. Successes In general, we conquered the obstacles that stood between the team and the Waldren web site. Two of our team members in Phase One learned HTML in order to properly code and set up the site, the scanner was eventually fixed, and we exceeded our desired target for the project (version 1.0 of the website includes over 4,200 digitized negatives). In Phase Two, we tackled the question of how to present the contemporary map; added a further 2,045 images and more contextual documentation; extended the number of geographical locales available through the browse feature; and added a site map to asssist navigation through the increasingly complex network of web pages.
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| All of the photographs in the Waldren Collection are owned by Dalhousie University Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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Click on a name to read more information: Phase Two
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Phase
One