CS 501
Software Engineering
Fall 2000

Project Suggestions

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections


The Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

The Cornell Institute for Digital Collections (CIDC) is a cross-disciplinary team established to explore the use of emerging technologies for providing greater access to cultural and scientific collections. Digital imaging has enabled CIDC to make many of Cornell University's rare and fragile collections available through the World Wide Web. Partnerships with academic institutions, museums, corporations, and libraries-national and international-have permitted CIDC to create digital collections from around the world.  For further information see: http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/

Two projects have been proposed:

1.  Refinement or replacement of a Document Structuring Tool

Client

Peter B. Hirtle and Anne Kenney, Co-Directors, Cornell Institute for Digital Collections (pbh6@cornell.edu; ark3@cornell.edu)

Project outline

When converting paper pages to scanned images, data about how one page image relates to the others must also be collected. For example, when scanning a book, one would like to know that a particular image is of page 14, and that it is the first page of the Table of Contents. Several years ago a Cornell student in computer science developed a front-end to a database to record rudimentary information about images that had been scanned from microfilm. The Institute would like to see this project expanded to meet more generic imaging needs. The task of the project is to upgrade the usability of the ImageTag program by identifying the implementation requirements for document structuring, determining the appropriate platform and underlying technology for the structuring tool, and building it for distribution by Institute. Part of the task will involve the incorporation of image reformatting and resizing routines in the software.

See: ImageTag -- http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/source

Technical

The original project had a Visual Basic to an Access database. One part of this project is to recommend a suitable technical environment for the new version.

2.  Rotate Tool for Web-accessible Images

Client

George Kozak, Digital Libraries and Information Technology, Cornell University Library, <George Kozak <gsk5@cornell.edu> and Peter B. Hirtle, Co-Director, Cornell Institute for Digital Collections <pbh6@cornell.edu>

Project outline

Cornell University Library is using two different interfaces for the presentation and display of scanned pages on the web. Both convert images on demand from a large, archival, format to a display format. In some cases, it would be desirable to be able to rotate the images in order to be able to read text that runs parallel to the screen. This project would involve developing a program that would interact with the existing environment and would allow users to control the orientation of images presented on the screen. 

See: http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cdl-math-browse.html for examples of the two existing interfaces.

Technical

The solution will need to be compatible with the Unix servers driving the web site (unless a client-based approach was selected).


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William Y. Arms

(wya@cs.cornell.edu)
Last changed: August 22, 2000