Learn: Ingesting born-digital
PDFs into Veridian News: Ernest Hemingway digital collection used in new documentary
Hello friend of Veridian,
Over half-way through 2021! This month we look at the ins and outs of directly ingesting born-digital PDFs into Veridian collections, as well as how a Veridian collection was used in a new Ernest Hemingway
documentary.
Ingesting born-digital PDFs into Veridian
While many of our collections are historical, with newspapers dating back centuries, some feature more recent issues produced since the dawn of software
technology like PDFs. If you have contemporary newspapers in born-digital PDF format, we may be able to ingest them into your Veridian collection without having to create METS/ALTO data, as per our usual process.
What are born-digital PDFs vs scanned PDFs?
A born-digital PDF newspaper (or other content) is defined as being originally
produced in digital form and saved as a PDF, as opposed to a scanned / OCR'd PDF which was created originally from a print form of a newspaper, then converted via scanning / OCR into a PDF.
Born digital PDFs are typically only available for contemporary newspapers, produced after the PDF format became popular (around 20 years ago).
The main benefit of skipping the METS/ALTO process comes down to cost. Loading born-digital PDFs (if you have them) directly into Veridian will cost a lot less than producing page-level METS/ALTO, while achieving a comparable result.
Ernest Hemingway digital collection used in new documentary
We were excited to hear from our friends at the Central Michigan University Clarke Historical Library recently, as they have collaborated with a documentary team to provide high-resolution scans of archives in their Hemingway Family Scrapbooks collection.
The PBS documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, ‘Hemingway’, aired in the United States this past April, and detailed Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway’s life. The Clarke Historical
Library team provided photographs from their collection for use in the documentary, to help bring the story to life.
The filmmakers noted that the addition of images from the collection were irreplaceable to their film, and having the collection online meant the process to obtain them was simple; no need for them to travel to Michigan to access them, and it also keeps the scrapbooks safe from wear and tear.
At Veridian, we always enjoy seeing collections we help build being put to great use and shared, and it’s even more exciting when this is
on the big screen.
