UP Library Services Digitisation: The Road to Digitisation

The road to digitizing “The life and Explorations of Dr. Livingstone”:

Preface:

When the report of the death of Dr. Livingstone reached this country, many people refused to give it credit. He had so often been given up for lost and mourned as dead, his countrymen were reluctant to believe that the grand old man would never more be seen amongst them. Ever since the indomitable Stanley took his last look of the great traveller – who, although for nearly six years he had been wholly cut off from civilisation, still lingered, self-exiled, until his work should be completed – the interest in his movements had not abated. From the Congo or from the Nile - according to the opinions formed as to the further course of the mysterious Lualaba, whose gathering waters he had followed from the uplands which divide the African central valley from that of the Zambezi, to a point within a couple of hundred miles of the hitherto supposed head waters of the Nile-intelligence of his movements had been looked for with an impatience which shows how strong an impression this remarkable man and his extraordinary career had made upon the public mind. The life of this truly great man, from its childhood to its close, is a living lesson which the youth of our country cannot take too closely to heart. The child and boy who, while undergoing the drudgery of twelve hours' daily labour in a factory, found time and means to educate himself for the noble office of a Christian Missionary to the heathen, is as interesting and instructive a study as that of the grown man, whose determined will and untiring effort have made us familiar with more of the formerly unknown, regions of the earth than any previous explorer of ancient or of modem times. The present narrative-mainly designed for that large class of modern readers who have neither the time nor the opportunity for becoming acquainted with the many sources from which it has been gleaned-has been written and compiled with the view of giving 8 graphic account of a memorable life story, the full details of which are either shut up in books beyond the reach of the majority of readers, locked up in files of newspapers, or buried in the reports and journals of the Royal Geographical Society-these latter, a source totally inaccessible to the general reader.

The process of digitizing “The life and Explorations of Dr. Livingstone”:

The book was first scanned in 2009, with 664 pages to scan. We started the derivating (down scaling and cleaning) process in 2010, and after about a week, the book was in the final PDF format, OCR’ed (text recognitioning) and optimized to an acceptable size for web access.

For marketing purposes, the Digi-office decided to make a surrogate copy (to a certain extend) of this book, as it has a beautiful front cover and some colour images. We contacted Wet Ink Print and Design, and they gave us specifics as to the format we have to hand over the tiff images for printing. Janine Loubser and Lidia Swart then started to scrutinize the book once again (664 pages and all!!) to make sure it is perfect, and Janine designed the front cover for the company that does the binding, as there were specific dimensions for the binding process.

Our office finally got the printed book back on the 22^nd of August 2011, and it really looks amazing! The photos should also express the excitement, as we are proud of the work we did and happy when we see the results!