Project HISPRA
(Historical Pragensia)
Supported by the European Economic Area
(EEA) and Norwegian Financial Mechanisms
Metropolitan Libraries Section Conference
Prague
June 1-6, 2008
Rare and historical prints in the MLP
 MLP owns a collection of about 20.000 items of rare and historical
documents
 Items are not in a good physical condition
 Reasons:
 low quality paper from the
19th century
 environmental influences
 damage caused by use
One of the books,
that need to be repaired before digitization
Digitalization in the MLP
 the four rare documents from the MPL book stock were
digitalized thanks to the foundation of the Ministry of Culture of
the Czech Republic
 digitalization was provided by the National Library and private
sector
 too slow and expensive
 the MLP was contacted to propose the
project within the European Economic
Area (EEA) and Norwegian Financial
Mechanisms Programme in its priority
area – conservation of European cultural
heritage
The map of Prague from 1938
and its e-copy on the DVD
Project HISPRA
 Goals
 the establishment of a digitalization workplace
 the digitizing of the documents from MLP’s collection
 The elaboration of the project included
 budget planning
 precise time schedule
 list of documents selected for the digitalization
 PR
 The project was approved

in autumn 2006
MLP received € 403.552
= 80% of the eligible costs
Financing from the Norwegian Funds
 3 particular „activities“ (budget headings)
 Project Management
 Support of Sub-projects
 Services
 Costs are presented quarterly in the Project Interim Report
 Transfers of finance between the budget headings are allowed
(up to 15% of each item)
 Project HISPRA was approved in Euros
Budget Project HISPRA




Project Management:
Support of Sub-projects:
Support:
Total costs:
A workstation with a Minolta scanner
in the Digitization Department of MLP
€ 065,500
€ 227,800
€ 211,140
€ 504,440
Project Staffing
1 head of the Digitization Department
10 employees (2 full-time and
8 part-time) for the digitalization
process
Hired staff: preparation of material
for digitalization, IT support, economy
of the project, administration
Document digitalization process






document scanning
images editing and indexing
OCR
export to the XML format
creating of the administrative metadata
importing of the data to digital library
IT equipment
 HW: 8 PCs, 2 scanners (Minolta, A3,


full color scale, Zeutschel, A2. grey scale)
2 servers, 1 data storage
SW: Sirius – editing, OCR, XML,
Kramerius – digital library
 One operator is able to process
15 pages per hour
The face-up scanner Minolta PS5000
Tasks and objectives of the section
 350,000 digitalized pages
 Online digital library
 First results shall be available in October 2008
Project publicity




Information poster
Leaflets
CDs or DVDs
International conference
in 2010
Director of the MLP and
Norwegian Ambassador to the Czech Republic
Thank you for your attention
Contact: Eva Merinska, merinske@mlp.cz
A view into the digitization workplace of the MLP