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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Archive Delimas Pt. 1

I am so surprised that we even have an Archive section. It has laid dormant for years, without a single page or hint of cover. Now we have one, and boy is it growing!

Over the past couple of weeks we've updated and completed the first step in our Archive section. We've uploaded the covers and at least five spreads from each year from 1990 to 2008. Roughly, we've uploaded about 170MB of JPG's for these different books. And we're just over the five-spread preliminary goal. So, you can imagine how big these pages will be.

This isn't abnormal, we expect it, but we didn't expect our website to have a 200MB limit. Since we're a "cavern site," a server dedicated to departmental pages, we have that limit as default.

Now we're working with IT to increase that limit. Also, we want to incorporate some fancy SEO features for these pages, and that doesn't happen with static JPGs. So, the next logical step is to turn these physical pages into OCR-ready PDF's. But we can't just plug those files into our javascript interface.

Issuu seems to be the answer, and we're incorporating it over the long run. First, we have to figure out if it will truly work for us, if it's adaptable to our large amount of archives, and if we can get the correct PDF's scanned.

That's my update, stay tuned for some innovation on the Archive front. Again, remember that I'm blown away by the fact that we have the section anyway!

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Something New: Archives

My new goal: Find yearbooks from the past and upload them to our "/archive" section.

Well kids, it's happening. Each week we're scanning and uploading more and more of past yearbooks. Johanna has been helping to speed up this process.

Right now I'm happy to report that we've scanned every cover that we have in the Yearbook Office. Yes, I know we're really low in some decades. Don't fear! Megan is searching out these missing books and I'm finding copies all across town.

Soon we'll start uploading pages from these magnificent books. You'll soon be able to read each book on the internet! Sounds like a migraine waiting to happen right? At first we'll be uploading interesting pages/spreads, but eventually we'll have everything on the site. Just give us time.

Do you have any copies? Send them our way!

In the meantime, check out our archive section and tell us what you think in the comments.

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