Life at OGS

Given that my internship for my public history program is already over half way complete, I thought it would be appropriate to finally share what it is that I've been doing.

I'm working for the Ontario Genealogical Society (a real mouth full when you try and answer the phone!) as an Image Technician. Basically, I travel around and digitize records of genealogical and historical importance. The idea behind this project is to digitize records that genealogists would find useful, as well as provide a second copy to historical societies.

I've been trained to use a book scanner - which is a bit misleading. There's no real scanner to it, instead it uses 2 digital cameras to digitize a book. It's been designed to cradle a book, without damaging the spine, and turns pages automatically through the use of air. A portion called the 'fluffer' blows air out to separate pages, and then a vacuum head comes over, and sucks up the page. You can see it in operation here. It is possible to move this machine, though it’s a tad on the cumbersome side – certainly not something to be taken lightly! Depending on the situation, either I take myself and the machine to the organization, or the records come to the office in Toronto.

After the physical scanning is complete, the editing begins – I figure for every hour of scanning that I do, there are likely 2-3 more hours of editing to do. This includes rotation of images, adjusting brightness and contrast, and cropping the photographs. The editing stage makes the digital record look like the original format – even down to the original colouring. Have a 100 year old book with yellowed pages? You can choose to have the pages cleaned up, to make them white again, or they can keep their yellowish tinge. It’s pretty neat.

It’s been an amazing experience so far – but there’s still much to learn! Tomorrow I’ll be trained on a copy stand – useful for larger books and maps.

Got anything you want digitized? Maybe I can help!