Digitizing the IJC Reports

Flathead River International Study

Text. Each page is scanned as line art at 300 dpi, then converted to text using Xerox's TextBridge 3.0 optical character reading software. I use a word processor (usually, MacWrite Pro 1.5) to strip out extra spaces, to check the spelling, and to insert special characters, such as the superscript "0" for indicating degrees. Straight text converts fairly well and quickly, but tables are another matter.

Graphics. I scan these at 300 dpi as grayscale objects to preserve antialiasing (edge smoothing). In some cases, I've added gray shading or color. For display on the web, I convert the maps to GIFs. For print, I convert the maps to bilevel TIFFs. Eventually, I hope to finish converting the maps to vector graphics, but it's a slow process.

Output. I use Claris Home Page 3.0 to convert the files to HTML for the web. For print, I format the files in Adobe Pagemaker and export the finished publication as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file.

Judgments. The original reports were prepared on a typewriter or a primitive word processor and printed using a sans serif typeface that resembles the Word Gothic typeface found on IBM Selectric typewriters. Although the double-spaced text aids the OCR process, the effect is not pleasing, and wastes a lot of paper. In any event, I do not have that typeface (and would not use it if I had it), so I needed a substitute. I chose an easy-to-read serif typeface, Berthod Baskerville, for the body text, and an elegant sans serif display face, Popple Laudatio, for titling and major headings. I also decided to use an efficient, reader friendly, double column format. I strongly suspect that had the report been prepared today, the designers would have chosen a similar format. Finally, because my spell checking software uses an American dictionary, I generally Americanized the spelling.