To build this web project, the staff of the Digital Scholarship Lab and Daniel Gorman Jr. used the following software and hardware.
Software
ArcGIS: Designed by Esri. Blair Tinker and Gorman used this commercial mapping system to georectify historic maps of Rochester.
Box: University of Rochester’s cloud storage system. Gorman and Guillory used Box to store approximately 90 GB of scanned primary sources, as well as research notes, for DRR.
FFmpeg: Romphf and Gorman used Ffmpeg for audio/visual transcoding within the Homebrew coding environment.
Google Drive: Students used Google Drive for submitting and editing drafts of their projects.
Handbrake: Romphf and Gorman used Handbrake to copy video files from DVDs.
Homebrew: Romphf and Gorman used this command-line coding environment for file compression and audio/visual transcoding.
ImageMagick: Romphf and Gorman used ImageMagick for PDF and photograph (JPEG/TIFF) compression within the Homebrew coding environment. The compressed documents were sometimes blurry, however, so Gorman also used the professional compression service ILovePDF.
Omeka: Designed primarily by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Omeka was the original content management system for DRR, before the project was migrated to a WordPress website. Tinker created the Omeka site.
Reclaim Hosting: The web host for the University of Rochester Digital Scholarship Lab’s projects and Digital Scholar gateway. Reclaim Hosting uses Installatron to back up websites.
WordPress Gutenberg Editor: DRR‘s present content management system. Gorman designed the website under the supervision of Tinker. Romphf and Joe Easterly offered feedback on the design and features.
Hardware
Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle: Built by Blackmagic Design. Romphf and Jim Barbero used the shuttle to convert VHS tapes into digital files.
Digital Transitions Phase One Camera Set-Up: Built by DT Cultural Heritage. Under Lisa Wright and Clara Auclair’s supervision, Gorman used the Phase One scanner to image a number of oversize archival photographs and documents, before switching to smaller scanners.
Epson Expression 11000XL Photo Scanner: Under Wright and Auclair’s supervision, Gorman used the Epson scanner to image archival photographs and documents.
Files scanned using the Phase One and Epson machines were saved initially as RAW files, then converted to TIFFs and JPEGs, from which derivative PDFs were created. Wright and Gorman created a naming schema for the imaging process: a code for the religious site, the order in which the item was scanned, the page/surface identifier (A/B for two-sided items, or numerals for multi-page items), a descriptive note, and finally the file type. For example, “SA_001-A [SA 1907 Church Photo 1].tiff” literally means: St. Augustine church records; first document scanned; recto (front) side of a two-sided document; this is the first part of the 1907 St. Augustine photos; and TIFF format. The derivative PDF received a more detailed name: “SA_ChiliAvePhotographsFrom1907_compressed.pdf.”
Knowledge Imaging Center (KIC) BookEdge Scanner: Tabletop model, with optical character recognition (OCR) capability. Built by the Digital Library Systems Group. Gorman used this scanner for imaging archival photographs and documents, which were exported directly into PDF format. Since these PDFs were not assembled from individual photographs, they only received descriptive names, as opposed to the alphanumeric schema used with the Phase One and Epson scanners.