Michigan State University Libraries

Dr. Michael Seadle

Digital Services and Copyright Librarian

Head, Digital and Multimedia Center, including the Vincent Voice Library

Co-Principal Investigator, National Gallery of the Spoken Word

Editor, Library Hi Tech

email: seadle@msu.edu
Phone: 517-432-0807
Fax: 517-432-4795
	17 March 2002
FINAL REPORT FOR THE DIGITAL ORCHID LIBRARY PROJECT
In our original proposal, we listed the purposes of this project as: 
1)	to investigate how best to organize and make accessible an online library of orchid literature; 
2)	to build a very small prototype library to demonstrate the recommended approach; 
3)	to lay the groundwork for a subsequent grant proposal submission.
Thus far we have created ???? page images of orchid books from MSU sources and from materials that AOS members loaned to us.  We promised originally only 2000 page images, and spent MSU money to complete the rest.  Some of the titles include: Ames, Schedulae Orchidianae; Boyle, Woodlands Orchids; Boyle, About Orchids; Buysson, L'Orchidophile; Camus, Iconographie des Orchidees D 'Europe; Rodrigues, Genera Et Species Orchidearum Novarum; Smith, Die Orchideen Von Java vols 1 & 2; Steins, Orchideenbuch; Watson, Orchids Their Culture and Management; Journal des Orchidees 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893; Orchid World Journal vols 1 & 2; Journal des Orchidees (unbound volumes) 1894—no. 97, 98, & 99.
We have also encoded several books using eXtensible Markup Language (XML). We transcribed the table of contents, the index of each work, and image captions, so that readers can find the parts they want easily.  The table of contents, index and captions will also be fully searchable. A tool funded through MSU resources will enhance searching so that a reader can specify whether to search just the image captions, just the index, or just the table of contents.  We chose to display the text in page-image format in order to guarantee accuracy.  All works produced as part of this pilot project are now available on the Webat the following address: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/  under "Orchid Literature."    
 Since an AOS member raised concerns about the quality of our digital images, we did some tests jointly with the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG).  Two factors affect digital image quality at the same degree of resolution and bit depth.  One is the wear or fading of the paper original.  The other is the quality of the optical system used for scanning.  A $30,000 camera with digital array would let MSU take sharper images, when needed, and MSU Libraries would welcome a donation toward acquiring such a camera.  Nonetheless we have followed the same national standards for preservation-quality digitization of published works that are accepted by both the Library of Congress and the National Agriculture Library (NAL), and our Minolta PS3000 scanner is the same preservation quality equipment that the Library of Congress and Cornell University use.  
We are also establishing the groundwork to expand this work.  We have had talks with the NAL and MBG about a memorandum of understanding that would establish an ongoing partnership for the digitization of orchid literature, and for linking that literature to MBG's work with specimens.  We hope that AOS will also formally join this partnership, and perhaps the Munich Botanical Garden as well, which I will visit when I travel to Germany in April.
I would like to make it clear that the costs for this pilot project have gone well beyond what we originally projected. MSU Libraries has matched and more than matched the funds we requested from AOS, and has allowed us to borrow from other resources to cover the final $5000 promised to us by AOS.  At this point we would like to request that final payment.
Sincerely,

Michael Seadle