Technical Info

Cameras/Flatbed Scanners/Lights/Stands/Software/Servers

After a final round of reviewing Request for Proposals (RFP), an imaging vendor was chosen to complete the digital imaging and scanning of the Michaux volumes. Images were captured using the overhead Phase One "Photophase" digital camera mounted on a TTI copy stand with a pair of cool 330W Videssence high-frequency fluorescent light sets including UV filtering. This camera was supported by a Macintosh G3 computer workstation running Phase One's scanning software and Adobe Photoshop software. Disbound volumes were scanned using the Epson Expression 836XL and Umax flatbed scanners supported by a high-speed Dell PC workstation running Adobe Photoshop software and Windows NT operating system. Each image was captured as a 24-bit color, 300 DPI uncompressed TIFF file. Image files were stored directly to a network server for quality assurance checking and recorded to CD-R.

Additional titles (Histoire des chênes de l'Amérique) were digitally captured using the Bookeye overhead book scanner.

The electronic transcriptions of the books were encoded in XML using the TEI-Lite document type declaration, based on the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium's Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange.

Book Conservation

These volumes were digitally imaged and are now
available online at our Digital Library.

Some of the bindings were in poor condition. The quality of the leather was poor and deteriorating from the boards and spine. There were fragments of leather that had fallen off of the binding. The surface of the leather was abraded and the leather membrane under the surface was dry and powdery. Fragments of leather would detach when handled. The front boards of some of the books were splitting along the joint or completely detached. Click on the following links to read about individual conservation efforts:
Flora boreali
Histoire des Arbres Forestiers
The North American Sylva

Flora boreali... (two volumes): Surface-cleaned. New acid-free endpapers were added, with new linen bindings including leather labels stamped in gold.

Before... After...

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Histoire des arbres... (three volumes): Disbound and surface cleaned. Pages were washed and deacidified. Color illustrated plates were surface cleaned, and all pages were mended as needed and guarded into sections. Plates were hinged onto Japanese paper, and sewn with lined thread. Lined endbands were added, with new handmade acid-free endpapers and new linen bindings with leather labels stamped in gold.

Before... After...

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The North American sylva...(three volumes): Disbound and surface cleaned. Pages will be washed and deacidified. Color illustrated plates will be surface cleaned, and pages mended as needed and guarded into sections. Plates to be hinged onto Japanese paper, and sewn with lined thread. Lined endbands will be added, with new handmade acid-free endpapers and new linen bindings with leather labels stamped in gold.

Before...

More to come...