Infrastructure

Our public code repositories can be found here: https://github.com/topics/nyu-dlts

Content Creation: DLTS Imaging Lab

The DLTS Imaging Lab currently has workflows in place to safely digitize a wide range of two-dimensional archival material. This includes but is not limited to:

  • Books and book-like bound material
  • Serialized objects such as magazines and newspapers
  • Any and all types of paper documents
  • Scrapbooks and ledgers
  • Oversized material, such as posters and maps
  • Printed photographs of all sizes
  • Photographic negatives on film as well as glass

Where do these archival objects come from?

  • NYU Special Collections
  • Institute of Fine Arts
  • Partner institutions involved in grant-funded projects

Who else do we engage with during the digitization process?

We produce lossless digital images using a Phase One IQ3 100-megapixel camera, calibrated to faithfully reproduce an object’s color properties at the highest possible resolution. These digital images are then stored in DLTS’s preservation repository and subjected to periodic checksum validation to ensure fixity and file stability. Utilizing industry-standard color targets, the lighting environment is reset and analyzed each time a photographer sets up an object for digitization, ensuring consistent color reproduction across varied objects over the course of a day’s shoot. In addition to the IQ3 camera, which provides the best quality image at the fastest possible speed, the lab is equipped with several Epson 10000XL flatbed scanners. These can be used to reliably scan legal-size documents and flat objects that are not considered exceedingly fragile or at-risk, albeit at a slow pace.

The lab is equipped with color-calibrated Eizo monitors, and we only use daylight-balanced continuous LED lights while shooting–this lighting system provides uniform illumination that does not emit heat, and is therefore ideal for illuminating archival objects. When capturing images, our camera and software systems utilize the CIE RGB color space embedded in the image file.

Preservation

Institutional Repository

  • DSpace
  • Haskell-based application to pipe records into library catalog

Data Repository

  • Invenio RDM

Digital Repository

  • Postgres
  • BagIt
  • Ruby on Rails
  • RabbitMQ
  • ffmpeg
  • Ruby, Go, and Perl (for scripting)
  • CNRI handle server

Archival Collections

  • ArchivesSpace

Born-Digital Content

  • FTK
  • Archivematica

Publication and Access

Digitized Content – Books and Images

  • Drupal
  • JavaScript
  • Djatoka
  • OpenLayers
  • MongoDB

Please view our API documentation.

Digitized Content – Books and Images

  • Mirador (pilot)

Digitized Content – A/V

  • Drupal
  • Adobe Media Server
  • Konch (3rd-party vendor for transcription)
  • Flowplayer

Digital Content – ePubs

  • Readium

Display and Discovery

  • Search – Solr
  • Institutional Repository – DSpace 5
  • Persistent Identifiers – CNRI Handle Server
  • Digital Library Publication Repository – Drupal 7
  • MediaCommons – Drupal 7
  • Digital Library websites – Hugo, Vue.js
  • Audio/Video Streaming – Adobe Media Server 5
  • Image Server – Cantaloupe
  • Digital Collections – Archivematica, ArchivesSpace
  • Preservation Repository – Ruby and Go
  • Storage – Isilon
  • Public Cloud – AWS