"We firmly believe in the value of innovation and technology"
Zeutschel user 'FotoHub' takes a leading role in important South-East-Asian digitisation project
How does one secure long-term corporate success? "We’ve have always been a forward-looking company, and we try to re-invent and innovate constantly”, is the simple formula for success according to Vincent Tan, CEO and one of the founders of FotoHub. The company from Singapore is one of the most important archiving service providers in the Asian region, completing scores of successful projects for major players including one of the leading Asian libraries. In this, FotoHub counts on cooperating with the German scanner specialist Zeutschel, working together in a spirit of expertise, power to innovate and mutual respect. A project of historical magnitude indicates what this accumulated competency can achieve. FotoHub will be supporting the Singapore Memory Project (SMP) aiming to create a 'digital memory' of the city state till 2015.
FotoHub has come a long way since its establishment in 1987, when it was a two-man operation providing photo-printing services to a one-stop professional imaging solutions provider. These includes traditional developing to printing of photographs, large format printing and online print services for private and business clients through to comprehensive services in all matters relating to digital archiving – for public institutions and also in the corporate sector.
At the moment, the 90-strong workforce operates in three business divisions, 40 of them in the archiving division. The company looks back with pride on numerous important awards. In 2008, Fotohub was the first digital imaging company to win the E50 Award for particularly successful small to medium-sized enterprises and was honoured with the 'Singapore Prestige Brand Award' in the category of 'Established Brands' in 2012.
And Vincent Tan has a clear answer when asked for the secret behind the company's precipitous ascent: "We firmly believe in the value of innovation and technology".
'Brothers in spirit'
The digitisation work of FotoHub for one of the leading libraries in Asia confirms this recipe for success. The aim is to preserve the national heritage and making it available to the general public.
And from the beginning the library executives defined extremely high standards. The goal is to achieve the best possible image quality with highest resolution, minimum noise and maximum colour fidelity. "Scanning takes place with an optical resolution of 600 dpi and 24-bit colour depth; the result is then saved as an uncompressed TIFF file", Vincent Tan reports. Due to the huge amout of data produced, pruductivity and efficiency of the scanning process is very important.
The FotoHub CEO quickly realised that in order to satisfy these quality specifications, he would need a supplier able to combine state-of-the-art scanning technology with high levels of expertise and customer focus. After exploring the market, Vincent Tan decided on a cooperation with the Tübingen-based scanner specialist Zeutschel.
"In Zeutschel, we found a 'brother in spirit'. The company offers top-class, high-performance scanners used to digitise cultural heritage and responds constantly to changes in current market needs by introducing technological innovation", says Vincent Tan.
Cutting-edge digitisation centre
FotoHub operates a cutting-edge digitisation centre. For this, the company purchased eight Zeutschel overhead scanners for A0, A1 and A2 formats, six of which remain in use; Vincent Tan sees this as a clear confirmation of the high product quality Zeutschel equipment delivers.
Digital capture of unique historical books proved a technical challenge; the paper format and the fact that books could only be opened to a very limited angle required significant effort. FotoHub approached the local Zeutschel distributor 'Microimage Systems', and the two companies set about developing modification proposals. Zeutschel engineers in Germany helped in equipping two of the existing A2 scanners with tables in A1 format and with a special book cradle to ensure optimum protection of the original documents.
In addition to the digitisation of paper-based documents, FotoHub offers microfilm digitisation as an additional archiving service. A huge newspaper digitisation project took place in 2010. Extensive inventories of newspapers, previously available on 35 mm microfilm only, were converted into digital files with the help of a high-performance film roll scanner by Zeutschel.
Efficient workflow
With the help of Zeutschel OS capture software, the scanned images have to go through a post-production process for further enhancement; this includes cropping, deskew and contrast adjustment, before the data is saved as an uncompressed TIFF file for long-term archiving.
In addition, OCR software is used to convert images with text into searchable PDF files for dissemination over the web. The OCR engine employed is able to recognize both Western script and traditional Chinese characters.
Vincent Tan is currently thinking how to further increase workflow efficiency. Evaluation of the open source digitisation software Goobi is currently under discussion. Vincent Tan can count on Zeutschel here as well; as a member of the Goobi Community, the company is able to provide extensive implementation support and software modifications to meet specific customer requirements.
Creating a ‘digital memory’
FotoHub has digitised a total of approximately 1 million documents for one of the leading libraries in Asia. The company's high degree of expertise ensured that it was selected in 2010 to work on the Singapore Memory Project, a major honour as Vincent Tan is keen to emphasise.
The Singapore Memory Project (SMP) is a sustained long-term knowledge initiative, intended to collect and organise the country's cultural and intellectual heritage, securing it in the long-term and preparing it for research. Over a period spanning five years, 5 million personal memories of Singapore's residents – including texts, audio, images and videos – are to be recorded using a web portal and an iPhone app.
In addition, FotoHub is digitising extensive stocks of published materials on Singapore. These include rare books, fragile documents and maps, along with drawings, newspaper cuttings and magazines. "In short, we are capturing everything about Singapore that can be stored and shared with future generations", Vincent Tan explains. The Singapore Memory Portal is scheduled for completion in 2015, the year in which the city state will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence. Embodying a strong belief in innovation and technology, Vincent Tan and his company FotoHub have taken a leading role in this unique cultural and historical project.
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Links:
FotoHub: http://www.fotohub.com/
Singapore Memory Project: http://www.singaporememory.sg/
About Zeutschel:
With its scanning and microfilm systems, Zeutschel GmbH has played a key role for more than 50 years in the digitisation and digital preservation of valuable documents, both in librarianship and archive management as well as in industrial companies and public administration. The company is the world market leader in book scanners and a trendsetter in the field of microfilm cameras and microfilm scanners. Now, zeta, Zeutschel's multiple award-winning overhead scanner, brings all the advantages of "scanning from above" into the modern office. It has never been so easy, efficient and eco-friendly to digitally copy pages from books, files or balance sheets. The range of software products and accompanying services under the "OSCAR" umbrella brand is extensive and supports libraries and archives in building up digital collections in the internet and in the realisation of digital services. The company founded in 1961, employs 65 members of staff and its products and services are represented in more than 100 countries. All Zeutschel products are "Made in Germany": The complete manufacture and entire research and development activities take place at the company's headquarters in Tübingen-Hirschau.