Digitizing the Collection
The sound recordings in the Southern Mosaic collection were taken from disc recordings in the Library's collections. When original discs were unavailable preservation tapes were used. The analog audio from the discs and tapes were transferred to Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to produce a master source for digitization. Some surface noise and scratching may be apparent on the recordings since they have not been enhanced or altered in any way from their original state. WAVE, RealAudio, and MP3 versions have been supplied for each recording.
The WAVE files were created from the DAT tape at a sampling rate of 22,050 samples per second, 16-bit word length, and a single (mono) channel. The RealAudio and MP3 files were derived from the WAVE files by digital processing. The RealAudio files were created for users who have at least a 14.4 modem.
JJT INC., of Austin, Texas, the Library's pictorial image contractor, produced the digital images in this collection in 1999. The company's scanning setup brings together a digital camera manufactured in Germany with JJT's custom software.
An uncompressed archival or master file was produced for each photograph, as well as three derivative files. The level of resolution employed for the Library's archival pictorial-image files is now ranging from 3000x2000 pixels to 5000x4000 pixels, depending on the types of original materials.
The Folklife Center wishes to indicate to researchers that duplicate images appear on this site. Multiple photographic prints (for example, enlargements, reprints, and contact prints) may exist for a single image. Therefore, although each physical item appears only once, there is some degree of image overlap.
Manuscript materials were scanned onsite by the NDLP paper scanning and text conversion contractor, Systems Integration Group of Lanham, Maryland. UMAX flatbed scanners were used to digitize most of the manuscripts.
Typescript materials were converted to machine-readable form at an accuracy rate of 99.95% and encoded with Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), according to the American Memory Document Type Definition (DTD). This DTD is a markup scheme that conforms to the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), the work of a consortium of scholarly institutions. The texts of the transcripts have been translated to HTML for indexing and viewing on the World Wide Web.
Dust jackets were scanned on an AGFA Horizon Ultra flatbed scanner, using FotoLook 32 and Adobe Photoshop software. The images are grayscale, 100ppi. The image may appear slightly cropped, as their size (12" square) is greater than that of the flatbed scanner, but no pertinent information was lost. The accompanying transcriptions, scanned on the same equipment but as bitonal images, attempt to recreate the layout of the dust jackets as well as capturing all textual information.