Digitization at UVic Libraries
Digitization at UVic Libraries
While the majority of the projects we work on can be accommodated on our equipment, some items are decidedly oversized and size does matter. How we approach them depends a little on the object itself but usually it means we need to scan the item in sections and digitally merge the files
When you think of sports championships, there is always the goal of winning the big trophy – Grey Cup, Stanley Cup, Rose Bowl, World Cup, and so on. When the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships (NAHC) needed a trophy, they turned to artist Carey Newman to carve one. He created the Turtle Island Trophy. While the trophy is a beautiful artwork in and of itself, it is not the most durable object to hoist overhead on the ice, so the artist and the NAHC approached us to 3D scan the trophy and provide a file to use to create a copy.
I was tasked with scanning a ceremonial naval sword. It’s a beautiful piece — but in the end, I could not create a full 3D object. While I was prepared to continue tinkering, ultimately it was decided to stop fighting; I had been run through, defeated by a sword.
In our first shipment of specimens we received an American pika, and a muskrat. Even before starting to scan, we suspected that the fur would give us some trouble.
Have you ever considered the applications of a 3D scanner? As the technology becomes more widely available, 3D scanners are being used for everything from engineering to art. In our case, we’ve been tasked with archiving a portion of the Ian Cowan collection.
One of the more challenging parts of image capture can be getting something that looks like a faithful representation of the original. Many things can impact the actual capture and the perception of the finished item including lighting, software settings, and the settings and calibration of the monitor on which the object is viewed. Some of these are more easily controlled than others.
When we are scanning, things generally go pretty smoothly but once in a while, they don’t. Whether the imperfections are part of the object in-hand or are introduced by human or equipment error, the results can still be interesting.
One of our bigger projects was the conversion of hundreds of Graduate and Doctoral theses and dissertations. We subcontracted a portion of the backlog and did the rest in-house.