Project Documentation was prepared by Peter Ryan.
Project Documentation: File Storage

File storage was a major concern for the Kinji Imanishi Digital Archive. Our original idea was to store all of the archive TIFF images and all of the compressed JPEG images on one main server. The large amount of storage space needed forced us to put our archive images on CD-ROMs because of several factors:

• We did not know the complete extent of the archive, as new materials were found in the family's home over time.
• During the first trip to Japan, several of the images were taken there to help structure the future archive and saved on CD-ROM to bring back to Canada.
• In Edmonton the following year, the same metadata principles were used to continue building the archive. As well, a backup of all of the TIFF images were saved on three sets of CD-ROMS.One set is in Japan and two are in Canada.

CD-ROM Storage

All of the archive images are stored on 89 separate CD-ROMs, which will be housed by the University of Alberta Library.

When photographing, the images are temporarily stored on a small network space. This allows us the freedom of photographing from any location attached to the network. The images are then downloaded to a computer hard drive and the network, which has a CD writer attached to it. The images are then written to three CDs.

Each CD holds 650-700Mb of data (about 80 letter-sized pages at 300dpi, 8-bit Grayscale). We had to burn two or three CD’s per day, which can add some time to the photography process. At approximately 10 minutes to burn each CD it can take time to back up your data this way. However, one solution was to use a lab with many CD-writers available on multiple computers, which are attached to a network. This way a number of CDs could be written at one time.

Unless the images are on a server, which has its own backup system, two copies of every image must exist.

SunSite Storage

A 72 Gigabyte Sunsite server disk was also purchased to house the final digital archive made up of the 89 CD-roms. The SunSite server offers automatic tape-backup space in case of failure or damage to one of the CD-ROM sets or if the server is damaged. When the project is done and the images are compressed for TIFF ready downloads, then these files will be stored on a server. This will allow for web access to the images. As well, the present web site offers JPEG images that will allow scholars to find and use the materials that they require without downloading TIFF sized images.

Photography File Size

The photographed collection contains many different sizes and shapes of documents. This makes it hard to gauge the amount of images that can be put on a CD and therefore it makes it hard to gauge the final size of the collection. The way the image is photographed also determines how big an image is. A color image can be 10 times the size of a grayscale image and 100 times the size of a black and white image. The way the image is photographed must be taken into consideration before starting to photograph a collection.

Particularly for this project, a two-week initial fact finding mission to Kyoto, Japan was required in order to measure the amount of materials and time that it would take to completely archive the project.

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