We don’t want to deflect this question but, truly, every project is different. Our pricing for the All-in-One Newspaper Digitization service includes:

  • vendor pricing for digitization and full text OCR processing;
  • any image splitting, rotating, quality control etc;
  • hard drives for storage and delivery;
  • shipping and handling;
  • administration;
  • ingestion of all files–page images, issue and publication records–into VITA;
  • and, mapping of any electronic index records to digital pages.

The pricing for ODW’s All-in-One service is very competitive, and depending on your archival needs, what material you are digitizing from, the number of pages and how you want your content to display and be searched, the actual price will vary. Talk to us about determining your needs and get a free estimate by contacting us.

If you have a collection of newspapers on microfilm or fiche, first ensure that you have copyright permission to reproduce the content for online display. Many third-party vendors will scan hundreds or thousands of images directly from microformats. Scanning microformats in-house is also an option if you have a microfilm reader/scanner that can render high quality digital files, a desktop license for OCR software, and sufficient staff time to dedicate to this task. See “What is ‘the best clean copy’?”

If you have a print collection of newspapers, first ensure that you have copyright permission to reproduce the content for online display. Many third-party vendors are able to scan the paper copy, often providing a better digital copy than would originate from a microfilm or microfiche copy. Scanning in-house is also an option if you have a large bed scanner or a camera with tripod and sufficient staff time to dedicate to this task.

Typed index cards can be digitized using a scanner, a scanner pen or manually transcribed and entered into the VITA data management screens. Handwritten index records can be transcribed and entered manually into VITA. We can also help with digitizing and processing index cards.

We can import your existing digital index records into VITA so you can edit, update, and add to that collection. If you are also working with full-run newspaper page images and have included page references in the index records, the index can be linked to the page images as well.

The best clean copy is the one that is the most legible after digitization. Microfilm or fiche positive exposures that have been used at public workstations are often scratched, torn or mended in ways that affect the image of the newspaper. Whenever possible, obtain the unused negative reels of the film version and either have a vendor digitize directly from the negatives or produce a first copy positive to digitize (this gives you a clean back up reel for your archives as well!). If the material is not filmed or negatives are unobtainable, then scanning the print copies will likely produce the best results. See “How can I digitize from paper copies?” above

The VITA IIIF viewer is used for any page display. This allows users to see the page, zoom in, and rotate the image to browse it. By having page images processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, the text from that page is fed into the database so users can search names, terms, and keywords and link to results there those words occur on a page. If the page image has been processed with OCR and a Positional OCR file is provided, those results (or “hits”) will also be highlighted on the page image. ODW’s All-in-One service automatically includes Positional OCR processing and ingestion to the database. See some examples.

For all digitization projects, we recommend getting a high resolution (300-400dpi) TIFF image to keep as your archival master. The TIFF format is “lossless” and is the best file type for storing and deriving other versions from or creating high resolution print material for other related projects.

For full page display with full text discovery, we need a medium resolution image and text file. We can work with your TIFFs, but recommend sending either a 300-400dpi greyscale or colour JPG that has been OCR’d and output as a TXT file or a readable PDF. Colour files make sense if the original newspaper content has been printed in colour or if the scanning is done from physical copies. VITA can extract text from most PDFs and will render a JPG from the PDF file for web display. For content that will be processed for hit highlighting,  we’ll need your 300-400dpi greyscale TIFFs or derivative 300-400dpi greyscale JPGs. Talk to us about this service.
If you are sending us digital files, proper file naming is a critical part of a smooth process. Please read more about File Naming.

If you have already digitized and processed your content locally, you can subscribe to our News Plus account, create your publication records and then manually load the issues. If you want to avoid the work of manual uploading, talk to us about “ingesting” all your files into VITA so that each is individually identifiable, but mapped to link properly in relationship to other objects (i.e. Publication record>Issue records>Pages>Index records) and ensure that every page has the associated TXT or hOCR files layered for full text searchability. This is a process that we conduct as part of our All-in-One service workflow or can be provided as a separate service. Contact us about your project ideas.

Once your material has been ingested and mapped (see “How do I get our local material into VITA?”), we activate your VITA account and you can login to manage or add to the newspaper content. Organizations with just index records can go with VITA Basic plan; any full-run newspaper collections need the News Plus plan; if you have a multimedia collection as well, the VINTA plan will accommodate all your needs! We will work with you throughout the process to determine what the best plan is for you. See our price plan features to compare.

Absolutely. OurDigitalWorld offere an All-in-One Newspaper Digitization Service to help take the pressure off your organization. Once we talk with you to determine your needs, we will take it from there. ODW helps you find your best copies, then navigates all the negotiations with vendors to accomplish the best quality digitization for your archive and online display, we ingest the files from the vendor, we can “map” any of your existing index records to the full page scans, and we upload all your content into the VITA News search and discovery interface. Once the newspaper digitization project is complete, you receive the master and derivative digital files back and can manage and continue to add to your online collection using the VITA software. Pricing is on a per project basis, so talk to us about your project ideas: info@ourdigitalworld.org or complete this form for a quote.