The Agnes Chamberlin Collection

Agnes Chamberlin: Technical Information

The objective of the Agnes Chamberlin digital collection was to digitize and provide web access to the archives of Canadian painter Agnes Chamberlin.

The project implementation can be divided into three separate processes:

  • Scanning
  • Metadata creation
  • Database creation and web access

Scanning
The scanning was done by the Collection Digitization Department, University of Toronto Library, on the Eyelike digital camera system V 3.04. The master images have been captured to the following standard:

  • File Format: TIFF
  • Scanning Bit Depth: 8-bit per channel of colour information (24 per pixel)
  • Compression: Uncompressed
  • Digital Resolution: 600 dpi

Metadata
The structural metadata was captured in a relational database during the scanning process. The structural metadata tables contain information about the pagination of the document, correlation between filename and page numbers, features of the document as well as particular comments about the quality of the original material.

The descriptive metadata was also saved in a relational database format. The descriptive metadata contains fields such as title, author, subject and others that facilitate in the discovery and retrieval of information.

In 2017 the collection was migrated from ColdFusion to Islandora. At this time, the relational database was converted to MODS xml. 

Database Creation and Web Access
The Agnes Chamberlin digital collection was initially made available online using the ColdFusion web application. It was then migrated to Islandora 7 in 2017. Click here to view a web archived copy of the original ColdFusion site. In 2024 the digital collection was migrated from Islandora 7 to the University of Toronto's homegrown Collections U of T Platform. Click here to view a web archived copy of the original Islandora 7 site.