Wikisource:WikiProject Ackermann’s Repository of Arts

Series 1

 * Volume 1

Decide whether Series-level pages need to exist in the hierarchy (probably not), and edit accordingly.

Figure out how/when naming conventions are messing up templates, etc.

Need help to transclude this volume.

Series 3
Moved from Index talk:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu — Ineuw talk 21:14, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Concerning Tables
Each issue ends with tables of prices for commodities, stocks, etc., and a table of weather data. We need a table expert to create them for January 1809 (text already proofread), which can then be used as an informal template for other issues.

They do not need to replicate the layout (rotated, columns). Each section can have its own small table.

Concerning Volume Indices
Model after those for Popular Science? Create new templates? Help!

Concerning OCR
A lot of the OCR for Vol. I is pretty bad, partly because the page images are poorly focused (see below) but also because the OCR is not optimized for 19th century texts. It is particularly bad with italics, frequently bad with capital letters and punctuation, and often abysmal at columns. The level of letter-level correction needed on every page is as bad as any text I've ever proofread. I am unaware of anything that can be done to address these problems at the user level. I have gone so far as to take page images from Bunka Gakuen, optimize them, and run them through OCR via Irfanview using a plugin which uses Kadmos recognition, but the results are even worse. Any ideas, feel free to speak up.

Storage on the Commons
commons:Category:Ackermann's Repository of Arts/Volume 01

Bunka Gakuen image set
If you have trouble deciphering the text because the image is unfocused, try using the images at Bunka Gakuen: click on Home, click on Title, click on R, click on The repository of arts (9th in list). The images are first presented in sets of 10, then you can click on the one you want, then you can right-click and save it or open it in a new tab and zoom in.

fashion plate image set at LAPL
LAPL has a large collection of fashion plates online:

http://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/visual-collections/casey-fashion-plates

Search for "repository." They have all v1 images, which should sort at the top. They are nice images, in focus and medium-sized (895x1200). But they are matted, and the mattes sometimes cover the printer's markings; also, sometimes the handwritten label on the matte is wrong.

v1 fashion plate image set at UW
There is a set of the fashion plates from volume 1 available online in the Special Collections of the library at the university of Washington:

http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/specialcollections

Enter "Ackermann" in the search box and you will get about a dozen fashion plates and a few other images. A couple of the images are high-resolution, but they are only available through a zoom-viewer which tiles the images. It doesn't use zoomify, but something called ajaxhelper. I have not been able to uncover a base URL that works with dezoomify. I can't find a similar tool for ajaxhelper. UPDATE: I found an online tool that will retrieve images from sites using ajaxhelper here. And it may not be worth the trouble since only a few images are high resolution. The others may be higher than they appear at first glance, though, because if you use the "full screen" option, you get higher resolution tiles. Even if they are smaller, some images may be better than the IA or BG images because they are properly in focus; at least they may assist with identification and reading the printer's markings.

v1 fashion plate image set at Stanford
There are five seven images at Stanford:

Set1 (two image): http://collections.stanford.edu/images/bin/zpr?cid=rf179sq8896&fn=1

Set 2 (five images): http://collections.stanford.edu/images/bin/zpr?cid=jq080wj2971&fn=1

They are also in a zoom viewer of some kind that I can't make work with dezoomify. They are very high res and may be worth the trouble of stitching.

IA volume set
This set is complete, and the images are large; however, they are often unfocused. Bunka Gakuen, by contrast, has perfect focus, but the images are smaller and the pages are slightly distorted because the images were taken with the book lying flat on a table, instead of more sophisticated methods used for most of the IA copies (which unfortunately do not correct for human error in focusing). In an ideal world, IA would obtain re-photographed page images correcting the errors.