descriptive image

Announcing Multispectral Imaging Service, version 1

As regular Bitstreams readers know, a cross departmental team within Duke University Libraries has been exploring Multispectral Imaging and its potential to make Duke collections more accessible to researchers in the Duke scholarly community and beyond since 2015. After spending 2017 developing MSI workflows, building expertise, writing documentation, and responding to experimental imaging requests, we are now ready to unveil the first version of Duke University Libraries MSI service for researchers!

Our first service model version accommodates small requests that are not urgent. The MSI team wants to partner with researchers to facilitate their requests as well as hear feedback about our current service and any other needs for MSI. We are offering MSI services for free for the next few months, but will institute a fee structure this Summer.

The service breaks down into 4 general steps:

  • First, researchers submit a request for MSI services using a webform. The form prompts requesters to share their research question and details about what they want imaged. We also want to know where researchers are from, as we are expecting both Duke and non-Duke affiliated patrons.
  • Second, the MSI team will review all requests, as MSI is not the ideal imaging solution for all materials and research questions. Requests that will not benefit from MSI will not be approved.
  • Third, we schedule approved requests for imaging and processing. We plan to conduct 1 imaging and processing day per month, so it may take several weeks to a month for approved requests to make it though our full process.
  • Fourth, we deliver the processed files to our patrons along with a report that details the imaging and processing procedures and outcomes.

Please note the following:
We are currently only imaging Duke University Library holdings.
We are limiting requests to 1-3 individual items or 1-3 pages within a bound item (which is the number of items we can generally image and process in 1 day).
Allow 2-4 weeks for vetting and up to a month for imaging.

If you are interested in requesting MSI services, but your needs do not fit the service described here, we still want to hear from you! Please do not hesitate to fill out our researcher request form to get the process started, or contact Susan Ivey directly.

If you want to learn more about MSI, check out the recent talk we gave at the Friday Visualization Forum on February 23.