Test Scans of Biao Min Cards

In choosing scanning parameters, a project may need to strike a balance between image clarity and file size. In general, in archiving images critical to the analysis of endangered languages, it is important to achieve the highest image quality that storage conditions allow.

Before making archival scans of the Biao-Min notecards the E-MELD project made a number of test scans, varying dpi, contrast enhancement, and color representation.

The results of these test scans can be viewed by clicking on the links below. Each link leads to a page showing the results of varying one of these parameters. On each page you can see the whole notecard by clicking on the thumbnail to the left of the image specifications:

• 300 dpi scans with varied contrast and color
• 400 dpi scans with varied contrast and color
• 500 dpi & 600 dpi scans with varied contrast and color
• 300 dpi, 500 dpi, 600 dpi with varied contrast and color

On these pages, note that the size of each file is given to the right of the thumbnail. In the end, the E-MELD project chose to scan the notecards at 400 dpi, grayscale with 50% contrast. Each image file thus was about 2 MB in size; and the approximately 2,000 notecards required a storage capacity of 4,000 MB. However, other projects have chosen other scanning parameters, based on the importance of the material scanned and the archive's storage capacity.

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The content of this page was developed following the recommendations of the E-MELD working groups.