Digitisation Office

The digitization office had an exciting 2011 up to now.

First we started working on the Hans Merensky project.  This project contains the complete document collection of the late Dr. Merensky as well as some of his books that are in the public domain. Most of the letters are the second or third flimsy carbon copy of the letter which does have its own challenges regarding the digitization method and the physical handling and preservation of the paper.  Up to now we came across very interesting letters in the collection and our team regards Dr Merensky as one of the most remarkable and outstanding people living in South Africa.  Our library can be proud to be called the Merensky Library.  If you have a chance please have a look at the video clip that Magriet did for the University’s Centenary: The Merensky story available on UPSpace at http://hdl.handle.net/2263/7614

 

Left: Magriet and Heila

busy in the

Hans Merensky

Memorial Museum, Westfalia

Right: Dr Hans Merensky

Ria co-authored two chapters in a manual managed by the NRF and funded by the Carnegie Corporation “Managing Digital Collections: A Collaborative Initiative on the South African Framework” which can be obtained from the NRF.

Ria has also been chosen by the United States Department of State to take part in their International Visitor Leadership Program where she had the chance to visit many digitisation projects running in Washington DC, Maryland and Rhode Island.  She also attended the Computers in Libraries 2011 conference in Washington DC with the aim to learn more about eReaders and eTablets and developing apps (applications for the hardware).

In this photo: Ria with a sculpture by the actor Anthony Quinn  

The digi-team is also experimenting with eReaders and Tablets and would like your input.  You are invited to visit the digitisation office and have a firsthand experience of the Kindle, Samsung Galaxy, iPad and Blackberry Playbook tablets.  We will also blog about our own experience with the eReaders and tablets soon (http://uplsdigitisation.blogspot.com/ ) 

The digitisation office finished a very difficult project for Sabinet “South African Journal of Geology” under the leadership of Lidia Swart.  In the project we had to scan oversized, brittle maps and journals.  The project was finished earlier this year and is regarded as one of our major success stories. 

Lidia Swart is permanently employed at the UPLS from 1 May 2011; we want to welcome Lidia as we know that she will be one of our outstanding personnel members during her career as an “Accidental Librarian”. We also welcomed Maritz Visser and Phyllis Chueu to our team and unfortunately had to say farewell to Janine.

The Digi-team: Cindy-Lee du Plessis, Janine Loubser, Maritz Visser,Phyllis Chueu, Elliot Matukane
Right: Ria Groenewald and Lidia Swart

The first half of this year also had its own challenges with this office having to deal with the older (not in digital format) Dissertation and Theses that needed to be converted from analogue to digital format for submission to the UPeTD platform.  The team did an excellent job under much pressure.

Our office has been given a new facelift  by painting it with warm colours that also does not reflect light unto the scanners. Thanks to Salomie for arranging this.

The digi-team was responsible for keeping the dry-walls alive during the renovations of the library and did an excellent job with the directions and our own facebook “Wall of Thoughts”.

We also finished our first book from negative plates with a very satisfied client (Prof W Meyer) who will reprint the Strauss book for the use by his students.  We are still busy with the physical preservation project of the negative plates. Herewith a part of Prof Meyer’s email to the office:

“Baie, baie dankie vir die moeite en die goeie nuus. Ek het 'n maand gelede by die outeur gaan kuier en hy was baie dankbaar dat sy boekie vir die nageslag behoue sal bly. Tiene van duisende studente het die boekie gebruik, en ek hoop dat hy selfs in die toekoms nuttig sal wees.”

We unfortunately had to stop the Onderstepoort Journal project for the first half of the year because of a lack of funding for temporary help therewith.  Hopefully this valuable project will again take momentum during the second half of this year. 

The Digi-office was visited by many groups and individuals amongst which were visitors from various UP Faculties and Departments, WITS University, The Africa Institute, Department of Arts and Culture, Gibbs Library Personnel, M.IT Group, University of Botswana and University of Uganda.  We give training to the University of Ghana.  Please have a look at our Facebook  page http://www.facebook.com/pages/UPLS-Digitisation-Office/145308528847872  for a constant photo update of our latest projects.

Also of interest is Lidia’s insert in this Newsletter on the making of our own surrogate copy of the beautiful book on Dr. Livingstone’s life and explorations.

The Digi-team