The University of North Texas Libraries’ Dean’s Innovation Grant, formerly known as the Green Light To Greatness Award, provides funding to research and projects within the UNT Libraries that promote scholarship and contribute to the gathering of knowledge that helps improve our libraries, our university, and the community.

Dean’s Innovation Grant 2013 Awardees

Tara Carlisle, Jeremy Moore

Project Title

Testing a novel method for the rapid digitization of archival materials

Project Description

The proposed project sought to test a novel method for the rapid digitization of archival materials.

Current digitization methods in the Digital Projects Unit utilize flatbed scanners, which take 40 seconds to scan each side of a letter-sized document at 400ppi in 24bit RGB. Due to increases in digital camera resolution and LED lighting technology a bespoke system can be built for under $5,000, which we hypothesize will significantly increase our throughput. The image capture time for each side of a letter-sized document would be less than 1/60th of a second, or 1/ 2400th of the time required by the flat-bed scanner.