Dangers of Digitization

If you are going to digitize an item shouldn’t you at least proof-read it to make sure you didn’t miss something? I am going to provide a link to a book scanned by the Library of Congress. The link I provide goes to the last page of the book. Please tell me how the book ends? Here is the link. The book is titled “Plain Talk and Friendly Advice to Domestics”. If your library has this book can you scan the last page and post it to LISNEWS? Then people can read the whole book at the Library of Congress site and then go to LISNEWS for the last sentence.

March 6, 2006 by Uncategorized 6

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6 Responses

  1. Bibliofuture says:
    March 6, 2006 at 11:39 am

    Link
    The link I provided goes to a University of Michigan URL. I found the book by starting here.
    So either Michigan or LOC screwed up or maybe both.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous Patron says:
    March 6, 2006 at 6:42 pm

    Obligatory header–when will LISnews
    Last sentences, obviously.

    A Google search unearths the following six complementary lines:

    “out against sin in others, therefore you are
    virtuous. Be not like the man in Scripture,
    who could easily see a mote in his brother’s
    eye, but did not suspect the beam in his own
    eye. As a servant, it is not your duty to reprove
    your employers for anything you may”

    Whether or not you need to proofread a digitized book depends on why you digitized the book.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous Patron says:
    March 6, 2006 at 7:46 pm

    Re:Obligatory header–when will LISnews
    I will pass on to the University of Michigan that there is a page that needs correcting. This book was not scanned at the Library of Congress.

    I would note that it is not, as a practical matter, possible to quality every single image produced in projects of this type, as highly desirable as it might seem to be to do so. This is not that different than quality review of microfilm, where again not every frame is looked at in detail.

    We are always happy to receive comments of this type directly. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/contact/report_error.h tml

    Thank you.

    Michael

    Michael Neubert, Program Specialist
    Digital Conversion Team
    Library of Congress
    202 707 3706

    Reply
  4. bowerbird says:
    March 6, 2006 at 11:28 pm

    Re:Obligatory header–when will LISnews
    michael said:
    > I would note that it is not, as a practical matter,
    > possible to quality every single image produced
    > in projects of this type, as highly desirable as it
    > might seem to be to do so.

    um, with all due respect, i simply cannot believe
    that it is not your experience (if you have any)
    that it is ten times as much work to re-do a page
    than to do quality-control checks when the book is
    still sitting on the scanner…

    after all, it wasn’t necessary to look at this page
    “in detail” to see it clearly needed to be re-done.

    so — “as a practical matter” — i think it’s obvious
    what a best-practices workflow would look like…

    however, if you nonetheless decide not to check
    your work in-progress, you need to do a better job
    of incorporating the public as your after-the-fact
    quality-control monitors.

    -bowerbird

    Reply
  5. Brian G. says:
    March 7, 2006 at 9:22 am

    Re:Obligatory header–when will LISnews
    If there a very few errors, it is easier to fix mistakes as they are noticed rather than hand checking every single page. Especially if the scanning process is at all automated.

    Considering they provided contact information and they are looking for comments, appears they are aware of their users.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous Patron says:
    March 25, 2006 at 1:32 am

    Re:Obligatory header–when will LISnews
    After a project goes online the end user is considered. Before and during the project, cost is the only concern. Perhaps a few years ago there were such people as “thoughtful scanners” who carefully checked their work during the process. Accountants now show these quality employees the exit door. Digitization moguls (like Google) currently employ the same type of minimum and sub-minimum wage slaves you will find in any fast food chain. With all the attendant problems of half-assed training and high turnover rates. They don’t check for hairs in your burger and they don’t check for missing pages in your book. They don’t get paid to do that.

    Reply

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