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If you have been following the CHDS blog for the past few years you will have seen some of our content relating to the digitisation of the <\/span>Charles Lyell Collection<\/span><\/a> held by the University of Edinburgh (links to some of our past blogs can be found<\/span> here<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>). This collection is made up of material belonging to the Geologist, <\/span>Sir Charles Lyell<\/span><\/a> (1797-1875) and contains geological specimens, around 300 notebooks, correspondence, and other papers relating to his work.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lyell\u2019s collections came to the University in two tranches, one major gift dating 1927 and then a second acquisition in 2019-2020, however, some items that had been previously sold separately by the family had remained in private hands. <\/span>Two recent items originating from the Lyell family, and acquired by the University, are two albums,<\/span> that were compiled by Sir Charles\u2019 nephew, <\/span>Leonard Lyell<\/span><\/a> (1850 \u20131926). These albums are made up of letters that were sent to members of the Lyell family by a variety of scientists and scholars including figures such as <\/span>Michael Faraday<\/span><\/a> (1791 \u2013 1867) and <\/span>Ralf Waldo Emmerson<\/span><\/a> (1803 \u2013 1882). The letters are also mostly accompanied by a portrait of the sender on the opposite page.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n These albums were captured by one of our talented photographers, Juliette Lichman, who has worked on the digitisation of the Charles Lyell Collection for several years. However, capturing the images is only the beginning of the digitisation process! Once the photographers have done their job, the images need to be quality assured and processed through software known as <\/span>Goobi<\/span><\/a> . Goobi is an open-source software application created by Intrada that we in CHDS use to process large numbers of images of archival material \u2013 such as books or letters. We have previously used it to process in excess of 110,000 images, including Charles Lyell\u2019s notebooks and other digitisation projects such as the <\/span>Witness Newspaper<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Goobi allows us to check the images, crop them, order them correctly and add page numbers and other relevant metadata before they are exported to our Image Collections website. After images are uploaded into Goobi it runs some automated processes including checking the format of the images are correct and attaches relevant data from the online catalogue including the title, shelf mark and the author or creator. The first step the user then sees is called \u2018Manual Validation\u2019, which allows each image to be viewed in turn, looking for any missing pages or obscured text and zoom in to check they are in focus.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When the first stage is completed, the images are sent to \u2018Layout Wizzard\u2019 where each image is cropped and rotated or straightened as necessary, leaving a small border around each page to show that the full page has been captured.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Next, the images go to \u2018<\/span><\/span>Production images QA<\/span>\u2019 <\/span>,<\/span> providing a <\/span>final overview of all the images before they are sent to \u2018Metadata Indexing<\/span>\u2019.<\/span> This final stage in <\/span>Goobi<\/span> allows <\/span>us<\/span> to add pagination to the images a<\/span>nd<\/span> other metadata <\/span>relating to<\/span> specific<\/span> features<\/span> of the volume such as front and back covers<\/span>. Once this step is completed, the <\/span>images are processed by <\/span>Goobi<\/span>, <\/span>which packages<\/span> the images and metadata together and finally sav<\/span>es<\/span> the files<\/span> on our servers <\/span>ready <\/span>for digital preservation<\/span>.<\/span> From here the cropped images <\/span>and attached<\/span> meta<\/span>data can then be uploaded<\/span> to our Image Collections website<\/span>, ready to view<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We hope that this blog has given you some insight into a few of the steps behind the scenes that go in to making our images of the Heritage Collections available to the public. The completed images of the two Lyell Albums can now all be found on the University\u2019s Image Collections website <\/span>here<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you would like to find out more about the albums, you can find the latest \u201cThrough Lyell\u2019s Eyes\u201d <\/span>blog here<\/a>!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miranda Strachan, Digitisation Operator\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you have been following the CHDS blog for the past few years you will have seen some of our content relating to the digitisation of the Charles Lyell Collection<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/diu\/files\/2025\/02\/IMAGE-2-ARC_688206608_001_00126-1024x664.jpg\")
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