The Jackson Davis Collection Digitization Project
The digitization and construction of a database describing the images began on January 18, 1999, and was funded by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. NOTE: These procedures were used by Jackson Davis digitization staff during the project. These are not current imaging workflows or standards.
Image Formats
The collection contains three kinds of photographic images:
- Nitrate film negatives in two sizes (4 x 6 and 2.5 x 3.5)
- Glass lantern slides
- Photographic prints for which original negatives do not exist.
Nitrate film negatives
Images were captured directly from the original nitrate film negatives (emulsion side up) using the project's two Epson flat bed scanners equipped with transparency units. The images were captured in full color at a resolution of 3072 X 2320 pixels (600 ppi) and saved as TIFFs. The resulting 8-24 MB TIFFs were written to gold-based recordable CDs. The images on CD were then batch-processed using Adobe Photoshop to invert the images from negative to positive and to convert from RGB color to grayscale.
Lantern slides
Images were captured from the glass lantern slides at 3072 X 2320 pixels (600ppi) using a Kontron Ultra High Resolution Digital Color Camera, model ProgRes 3012 and saved as TIFFs. The resulting 8-24 MB TIFFs were written to recordable CD. The images on CD were then batch-processed using Adobe Photoshop to convert from RGB color to grayscale.
Photographic prints for which original negatives do not exist
Images were captured the original photographic prints using the project's Epson flat bed scanners.
Image Categories & Numbering
Davis's own card catalog categorized his images by geographic area. These categories are included in the descriptions with specific negative numbers. For instance:
- Southeastern U.S. images range from negative numbers: 0001-3248
- Unidentified images range from: 5000-5177
- Miscellaneous images, lacking negatives range from: 6000-
- Lantern slides range from: L1151-L1374
- African images range from: AA01-BJ18
- Middle Eastern and European images range from: BE01-CJ16
- Personal and family images range from: EA01-GM03
- Unidentified lantern slides range from: HA-HS
Descriptive Metadata
The descriptive metadata is derived from Jackson Davis's card catalogue system for the years 1910 through the late1930's. The information on the index cards is arranged alphabetically by subject, and also numerically by the numbers he assigned to his negatives. The index card generally includes the negative number, the state and county in which the picture was taken, and the name of the school, and, occasionally, the date. Mr. Davis sometimes also recorded additional descriptive information about the image of the photograph. Additional information was found on the back of the photographic prints removed from his personal papers. The information recorded on the cards is not necessarily correct in regards to the subject of the photograph. As of February 2000, the descriptive information for Virginia has been reviewed and verified; descriptive information for other states has not been verified All of the information in the database was entered exactly as Jackson Davis wrote it and has not been edited in any way.
Davis used several topical categories on his cards:
- African-American images
- School images
- African, Middle Eastern, and European images
- Charlottesville and University of Virginia images
- Davis Family images
The descriptive metadata includes the following information:
- City--city names, according to the index cards.
- State--states in which photographs were taken, according to the index cards.
- County--the county in which the photograph was taken, according to either the index cards or a map.
- Country--the country Davis was in at the time
- Month and Year--the date the photograph was taken, according to the index cards.
- Negative number--the number assigned by Davis to individual negatives.
- Comments--a free-text field in which special features of the content of the image are described. This field will be expanded in the near future with additional information gleaned from the project's archival research.