National Science Foundation

Problem
Scientific data at risk of being lost or destroyed

The National Science Foundation (NSF) an independent agency of the Federal Government that supports basic research and advancement of science by awarding grants to institutions for specific projects. Succession planning and the need for historical preservation had evolved into an agency requirement for an aggressive digitization program to support the mission of the foundation.

Solution
A conversion  program as well as setting up an internal capability to access & preserve key scientific data

Edge Digital Group, assisted NSF in the digital conversion of still image media, including prints and photographs, books, catalog cards, manuscripts, microfilm, microfiche, along with the digitization of various audio-video materials. The Edge team performed these duties both on-site and off-site. Digital conversion services included enhancements such as embedded metadata, creation of vector tagged text, internal and external links, and region of interest-specific enhancements. The services also included the reformatting from one format to another (e.g. conversion of TIFF to JPG), the creation of duplicate or derivative files from digital masters, creation of intermediary analog duplicates or analog copies for preservation, or the creation of physical copies from digital files. In addition to conversion work itself, the Edge Team was able to provide a variety of services, expertise, and software and hardware related to conversion, such as data capture from image files.

Result
A state of the art digital library

Incorporating a comprehensive, state-of-the-art solution enabled NSF staff and external partners (as needed) to convert and catalog a wide variety of legacy information in to a usable & readily accessible digital format.

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