Has anyone had any experience of digitising an old-fashioned loose-leaf sheaf
library catalogue? We are currently considering this and would be interested to
hear from anyone who has already been through it. Our Local Studies catalogue
consists of eighty typewritten loose-leaf binders, measuring 75x160mm, in two
sequences (author/title and subject) with the tracings written in pencil on the
back of the author entry. There are about 10,000 sheets in the author/title
sequence, and we are assuming that the author sheets will be the ones the
digitisation company will work from. Initial trials have obtained reasonable
results from OCR.
The general County catalogue is already computerised, and the more recent
accessions in the Local Studies collection are already listed there, but without
our own amendments, indexing, keywords, etc.
If anyone can give us any advice, warn of the pitfalls, or perhaps recommend
some companies who do this sort of retroconversion, we'd be very grateful!
Thanks.
Iain
Iain Watson
Arts, Libraries and Museums Department
Durham County Council
County Hall
Durham DH1 5TY
Tel. 0191 3834478
Fax 0191 3841336
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