SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Finally our quest led us to a service bureau that uses more powerful film scanners and produces much more compact images. With the aid of an archival program, it became possible to view the images and zoom on any particular part of the page without the loss of clarity. This final approach, though the most expensive, became our default procedure. This new system was done in two steps. The first was to scan each microfilm or microfiche frame into a TIFF-formatted image files with Group IV compression. Each group, under a single CML number is stored in a separate folder on a CD. Each CD included several CML folders. Then each CD was integrated in an indexed database structure using the Alchemy Image Archival program. The Contents of the CD is accessible through the Alchemy Viewer software, which facilitates the viewing of each image of every manuscript. The viewer included features such as optical zooming, image rotation, image printing, and image export. Advantages and disadvantages of the Digital media used: The product of this new method also had its satisfactory and unsatisfactory points. Less satisfactory results were mainly confined to items that were not very clear on the microfilm frame to begin with. Such included the more ancient documentary manuscripts and literary Sahidic texts. However the most satisfactory results were produced in the Copto-Arabic, Arabic, and the later Coptic manuscripts. Plans are being made to repeat the digitizing process for such unsatisfactory items, using dedicated film scanners. This however will be done as time permits and as need arises. The main advantages gained by digitizing included the following: 1. Portability of the material 2. Ability to print through an economical and standard printer as opposed to using a special expensive microfilm/microfiche printer 3. Zooming Capability

4. Cut and Paste feature which is useful for instruction as well as codicology and paleography study The Contents of the CDL: As it stands now, there are 866 CML items from the 35-mm collection and 184 from the 16-mm collection that have been digitized with the latest method describe above. This contains about 180,000 frames. They are stored on 59 CDs of Alchemy archived databases. The first 14 CDs included a total of 5 databases, consisting of multiple CDs. This necessitated the copying of the multiple CD of each database to a hard disk to be able to view its contents. The other CDs can operate from the CD directly. There are several other manuscripts on microfilms that have been digitized directly from the original or were produced by various other means than those mentioned above. A more detailed list of the items will be available on our website soon. Utilization of the Collection: So far this collection is being utilized for a variety of projects such as:  Text transcription  Instruction  Manuscript studies  Verification of older published texts The digitized collection currently is stored in its entirely on a local server at the Los Angeles Coptic Center and it is accessible through many of the work stations there. Future Work: Much work is still ahead. The most challenging is producing a comprehensive catalogue of all the material available. Also, there are several important items that have not been digitized or are in need of a higher resolution scanning. The work on these items would depend and time available and/or when need arises.

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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