Except as described below, the
originals of the documents in this website were digitally photographed
at the Library of Congress, the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Archives, or the
Yale University Library.
They were photographed with a Pentax K-20D mounted on an RPS Studio Copy
Stand. The camera and stand were set to be certain to capture the
entire document and the images necessarily also included part of the
baseboard.
The
camera was controlled by a laptop using PK Tether or Pentax Remote
Assistant software and the images were directly stored in an external
hard drive rather than in the camera itself. The software also
made it possible to automatically assign each image a file name that
indicated the archive box and file in which it was found and a unique
image number. The file naming protocol is described on the Sources
Page.
Each image was stored as a jpeg file, usually between four and six
megapixels in size.
The website,
however, does not contain the original jpeg files but instead displays
pdf files that were created from the originals as described to the
right.
Most of the
documents from the Byron R. White Papers were originally photographed
and stored by
Professor Lynda Dodd, the Joseph Flom Professor of Legal Studies at
CCNY, and her research assistants, as part or Professor Dodd's ongoing
scholarship on the history of Section 1983. Those documents were
photographed with different equipment and tethering software.
All
original image files have been maintained. Please
let me know if you think that any particular image needs to be replaced
with a higher resolution version. In addition, I will also be happy to
send higher resolution copies (or original JPEGs) of any images to
anyone who needs them. You will be doing me a service by identifying
unclear images.
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The images that
constituted a single document were converted to a single pdf file to
save space and speed access. The following was the standard method for
that conversion:
- JPEG files
were edited using Microsoft Office Picture Manager.
- Images were
rotated to vertical.
- Images were
cropped to eliminate most of the background (copy stand base)
- The program's
color enhancement tool was used to try to create accurate white
background. (In some cases, color saturation was reduced as well.)
- The program's
autocorrect function was used if it created a more legible copy.
- The program's
compress file function was used at the "document" setting. (This
ordinarily reduced the file to roughly one-tenth its original
size.)
The resulting
jpeg image files were then combined into a single pdf file using Adobe
Acrobat Professional.
While this was
the standard protocol, images that contained difficult to read,
handwritten notes sometimes required individual adjustment (usually of
brightness and contrast) to improve legibility. Where a need for
substantial magnification was anticipated, the image file was not
compressed. Please let me know if you think that any
particular image needs to be replaced with a higher resolution version.
In addition, I will also be happy to send higher resolution copies (or
original JPEGs) of any images to anyone who needs them. |