Digitisation
Document Contents
Acquisition of images
The libraries from which images were ordered received a copy of OCVE's digitisation specifications. Not all were able to supply material at the defined standards, however, while others agreed to supply images to OCVE at a lower resolution (e.g. 300 ppi) than the one requested by the project team. For this reason, users will notice some variability in the quality of first-edition images within the OCVE resource. Although every effort was made to ensure consistency across this large virtual collection, such variability is inevitable given that the c. 2,200 images in OCVE were obtained from over twenty different suppliers.
Most participating institutions employed in-house digitisation staff, but in some cases the scanning or digital photography was outsourced. For example, PL-Wn digitised the Chopin editions held by PL-Wnifc (formerly in the collection of the Towarzystwo imienia Fryderyka Chopina). (See the abbreviations listed under library and other sigla.) Lynda Sayce (employed on DIAMM) photographed the scores held by US-Wc, while Declan Corrigan digitised material at IRL-Dtc.
Despite repeated approaches, OCVE received no response of any kind from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna; for this reason a number of late reprints of the English editions do not appear within the online resource. Interested users may of course choose to approach the Gesellschaft directly themselves. Fortunately, the particular late reprints are not of critical significance to the understanding of how the works in question evolved over time; for full details see the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions.
Users occasionally will find that the images of certain pages listed in the work tree are unavailable. This is usually because the institution holding the score in question could not supply digital images thereof – for example, if these pages were missing from the original itself. OCVE regrets any inconvenience caused to users.
Specifications
OCVE utilised the following specifications, which were derived from those employed in the University of Chicago's Chopin Early Editions project and during the pilot phase of the project.
Quantity and content of images
OCVE typically required scanning of each score in its entirety, including wrappers and blank pages, unless specified otherwise. Each page was to be scanned individually and saved as an individual file, with a unique filename. Despite this, the OCVE resource typically shows only those pages with music text, along with title pages where relevant. (Compare the approach taken in CFEO, where complete editions including wrappers, blank pages and advertisements are shown.)
Quantity of images
The following basic quality standards were established for all digital images in OCVE:
- Images should be scanned at 400 ppi, 24-bit colour.
- Images should be saved as TIFF files on best-quality CD-R or DVD (though other modes of delivery, such as transfer on external hard drive, could be arranged).
- No compression or other modification, such as sharpening, should be applied to the TIFF files prior to dispatch.
- The colour profile should be the camera profile, and should be embedded during capture (i.e. not after scanning).
- Pages should be scanned using a colour bar (such as the Kodak Q13 colour separation guide and grey scale) placed alongside each page in question. OCVEalso welcomed the use of a ruler, where possible, to determine original sizes of documents.
- The orientation of pages when scanned should be level and right-side up.
- All page edges should be visible, and the images should not be cropped.
- Overall, scans should capture with fidelity the smallest significant details of each image, without resulting in impractically large file sizes or requiring heavy editing after the scanning process.
Rights
OCVE signed licence agreements or otherwise obtained permission from the various supplying institutions and private collectors to display the digital images in the Online Collection. According to the standard agreement, and as a rule of thumb, copyright in the digital images supplied by a given institution or collector is owned by the latter, whereas OCVE owns the database rights in the OCVE resource. (Note that the rights to OCVE material taken from the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions are held by the authors thereof.) Users will find copyright notices above each of the images displayed in OCVE, and should they wish to reproduce any images in full or in part they must first seek the express permission of the supplying institution or other designated copyright holder. (OCVE cannot offer any assistance in this regard.) As for the textual material within OCVE, normal scholarly citation is of course acceptable, provided that full attributions are given in accordance with bibliographic conventions.
Further information about the rights issues surrounding OCVE as well as other online resources like Chopin's First Editions Online and the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music can be found in the report of a CFEO/OCVE/DIAMM seminar on image delivery and rights held at King's College London on 11 June 2004.