Utilizing Comparative Advantages of New Platforms in Digital Collection Edicija: “Dual Approach” in Presenting the old Prints

Zoran Velagić ; Tomislav Jakopec ; Josipa Selthofer

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 21 (2012) no. 1.

Résumé

The aim of the paper is to outline the strategy of dual presentation of old prints in digital environment. After a brief introduction regarding content development, the paper focuses on steps and technologies concerning platform development. The content development strategy stems from the presumptions that two main approaches in old print presentation, one presenting only the text usually obtained through the OCR software, and the other presenting the print page in image file formats, deprive users either of original context of text presenting (a print page with specific typography, margin size, position of page numbering and so on) or of the advantages of full text searchability. These two deficiencies can be solved by “dual” approach in content presenting, based on simultaneous view to both the image (a page) and edited, searchable text. Regarding platform development, Edicija has been developed on open source technologies. It runs on operating system Linux, web server Apache, Relational database management system MySQL and server side programming language Hypertext preprocessor (PHP). Edicija implements web 2.0 principles using AJAX technology. The main goal on the technology level is to achieve visibility and functionality of the collection regardless of device, operating system or browser. The application of aforementioned strategies resulted with Edicija – digital library of Croatian printed heritage, available at http://web.ffos.hr/EDICIJA.