Today we will tell you how we helped digitize the Sakhalin Regional Universal Scientific Library . We started to convert libraries into electronic form for a long time. Regular blog readers will surely remember a review post on our library projects, as well as topics dedicated to digitizing the Hartley Library and creating a catalog of the Royal Botanical Garden of Edinburgh. So let's go.

The Sakhalin Regional Universal Scientific Library has existed for 67 years and remains one of the main information, cultural and research centers of the Far East. Today, the library holds about 617,000 different editions.

One of the most valuable collections is rare local history publications on Sakhalin and the Kuriles, including local periodicals. Rare publications are not issued at home - they can deteriorate or get lost - therefore, they can only be viewed in the reading room. If you study Sakhalin with some goals of your own, and live, for example, in Moscow, until recently the library could not make you happy. Books from the depositary fund are not issued - some of them are in this state (photo below) and you simply cannot give them in your hands:
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It must be said, the Sakhalin Regional Universal Scientific Library has long been trying to make various publications more accessible, for example, since 1994 an electronic catalog has been formed. The foundation of local history literature is presented in the electronic catalog - 98,187 bibliographic records. Now the library staff are participating in the program for creating a full-text database of regional information resources — they provide periodicals and documents from the foundation for creating electronic copies. Already scanned more than 7 thousand books and more than 30 thousand periodicals. Librarians also analyze the contents of the collection: they reveal the contents of publications, analytically write collections, supplement the electronic catalog entries with subject headings, keywords, and annotate them.

The process of digitizing the publication consists of scanning on network scanners and processing the resulting image using Scan Tailor (page cropping, text alignment) and Photoshop (processing lights, shadows, adjusting the brightness, image contrast). At first, the librarians tried to work on the page-turning scanner, but he ruined several books, and stopped using this function.

After image processing, it is run through ABBYY Recognition Server , a solution for text recognition and converting documents into editable electronic formats. The solution creates PDF files of newspapers and books with recognized text, then the files go to the storage system. Records are created for finished documents with a description of the resource and search attributes. With the help of Recognition Server 2000 editions are processed annually, or about 200 thousand pages.

The electronic library consists of three parts: “Sakhalin and the Kuriles: islands of the morning dawn”, “Public electronic library” and “National electronic library”. For users, a navigator has been developed on all websites of electronic libraries. You can narrow down the search for the necessary information on the topic of the article, the author, as well as the heading, collection and text of the document.

Periodicals Library

This electronic library has been formed since 2009, since 2012, the site “Sakhalin and the Kuriles - islands of the morning dawn” has been opened for remote users). Specialists from the digitization sector select images of newspapers and place them into the KAISA-Regional Studies system, designed to form a full-text electronic library. Today, over 9 thousand issues of regional editions and more than 10 thousand articles from newspapers are available in electronic form, among them are the famous newspapers Sovetsky Sakhalin (published since 1933) and Gubernskie Vedomosti.

Book fund

Currently, 7,221 books from a rare regional fund of local lore have been digitized, for example, especially valuable books: “A 10-verse map of Russian Sakhalin, compiled from surveys of geological committee expeditions of 1907–1910. and other sources ”in 1914,“ The first general census of the population of the Russian Empire ”in 1897, edited by N. And. Troinitsky, "Sakhalin Island and Expedition 1853-54" 1872 N.V. Busse. Digitized book editions are partially posted on the library's page on the portal of the National Electronic Library (NEB) and in the Public Electronic Library in book thematic collections.

Periodic editions and especially valuable books after scanning are not returned to the local history department, but are transferred to a special fund for conservation and permanent storage.



Digitization work continues. If you are exploring Sakhalin for some of your purposes, or are just going to visit, the Internet version of the Sakhalin Library will help you.