On digital archiving’s cutting edge

FLOODING THE MARKET: Diana Coderre, co-owner of The Digital Ark, says the company began work with the U.S. Naval War College with the preservation of two log books, both from 1812. It’s part of a long-term collaboration to develop the Naval Historical Collection website. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON
FLOODING THE MARKET: Diana Coderre, co-owner of The Digital Ark, says the company began work with the U.S. Naval War College with the preservation of two log books, both from 1812. It’s part of a long-term collaboration to develop the Naval Historical Collection website. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON

As the digital world rushes forward with new developments, The Digital Ark continues to expand its offerings in areas such as interactive kiosks, to widen the geographical territory of its client base and to upgrade its infrastructure to accommodate the growing demand to serve as a repository for large, digital collections.
One of The Digital Ark’s clients is the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, said Diana Coderre, who founded the company with her husband, Edward Coderre, eight years ago.
An interactive kiosk unveiled during the summer at the U.S. Naval War College Museum is just the most visible part of a multilayered project.
“We began with the preservation of two log books, both from 1812, from the privateer Yankee,” said Diana Coderre. A privateer is a privately owned ship authorized by a government to attack enemy ships during wartime.
“The U.S. Naval War College Library asked us to do digital preservation and conservation and create an exhibit around those journals,” she said.
The iPad kiosk created from the initial preservation project includes videos, interactive maps showing the course of each of the voyages and a flipbook interface that links to either of the two journals and allows visitors to zoom in, click to the interactive map, go to a corresponding page in the journal and hear the voiceover for that section.
In addition to the War of 1812 kiosk, The Digital Ark is in a long-term collaboration with the Naval War College to develop the Naval Historical Collection website, expected to be launched later this year. The website will feature rotating online exhibits and provide advance searching and browsing capabilities. Visitors to the website will be able to create user accounts, add comments, request materials, email favorites and share information via social media.
“It will include the logs from 1812 and material from other collections. They’re continuously sending us collections to digitize,” said Coderre.
The Naval War College staff will be able to monitor analytics data to track popular searches, which will help in prioritizing digitization projects.
The demand for hosting of large collections for cultural heritage and historical societies, among other clients, and the need to upgrade infrastructure overall has prompted The Digital Ark to move twice since its founding. It moved from Newport to Providence and then in October to a new location on Westminster Street in Providence. “It’s known as Fiber Alley because it’s on top of the main fiber-optic trunk line running through the city,” said Coderre. “After designing and completing a build-out, our new facilities meet our needs for expansion and security, as well as digital and electrical infrastructure.”
A substantial investment has been made in infrastructure to support the company’s own servers to host the growing number of archiving partners.
The Digital Ark has digitized a wide variety of materials for a broad spectrum of organizations, including the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, one of the first lending libraries in America, founded in 1747.
“Probably the oldest material we’ve digitized is a medieval illuminated Bible from the Redwood Library,” said Coderre.
In work done for the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, The Digital Ark digitized a 103,167-page manuscript collection containing letters and documents from the 1800s addressed to Eddy, the American author, teacher and religious leader who called her work Christian Science.
Since the collection had no catalog, The Digital Ark used voice-recognition software to capture the first five words of content on each page as metadata to create a unique digital identifier. Overall, The Digital Ark has digitized several hundred thousand images, estimated Coderre, including books, slides, negatives, posters, lithographs and paintings.
The reach of The Digital Ark has continuously expanded from Rhode Island to additional clients in Boston, as well as in New York and Washington, D.C.
The Digital Ark is continuing growth on many levels and considers its complete suite of offerings an advantage over competitors, most of whom offer one portion of the work, such as designing websites or digitizing collections, said Coderre.
“You create a digital image, you put it into a database and you share it online or in exhibits across multiple platforms,” said Coderre. “What you’re ultimately trying to do is tell a story.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
The Digital Ark
OWNERS: Diana Coderre, Edward Coderre, Wanda Coderre and Dorothy Boyle
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Digital archiving, preservation and media development
LOCATION: 1155 Westminster Street, Suite 102, Providence
EMPLOYEES: 4 full time, 1 part time
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2005
ANNUAL SALES: WND

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