SCANNING MHS BANNERS/WHHS ANNUALS

First of all thanks for  helping us get a full set of school yearbooks in a digital format. Here are a few background points:

Scope
We are trying to get all of the known yearbooks produced during the school's lifetime.  See the Yearbook Page

Purpose
The primary reason is to get the yearbooks into a more permanent form since the paper versions are deteiorating. A secondary reason is that the yearbooks contain the best photo and data record available on the school, the staff and the students. We'd like to make this widely available for people who have lost their copy, would like a copy relating to a family member (parent, sibling etc) and perhaps researchers with a different focus.

Distribution
It is hoped that we can find a best method for distributing the end result to interested parties. We'd prefer to do this via the web but are open to other possibilities. We get the occasional request for copies, but can't help out at this point.

What to include
We'd like to have the complete yearbook, including front and back overs (except when blank), advertisements, autograph pages - the whole works. We'd prefer to have yearbooks that haven't been defaced, obviously.

Technical settings
We are trying to sit astride the dual purpose of displaying the pages in a screen-friendly format on the web and preserving the ability to publish individual pages or photos at a higher resolution in other media.

Resolution & Image size
We have found that a scan resolution of 300dpi is the best compromise between the web resolution (usually 72 dpi) and the upper end of home canners (usually 600dpi). The 300dpi level causes the file size per page scanned to be quite high, usually in excess of 2Mb, as well as creating a very oversize image (when viewed with a standard screen). To solve this we set the page size at a width of 750 pixels. Both resolution and page size can usually be set from either the "Options" or "Settings" choice on the software that came bundled with the scanner. If you can't get the 750pixel to work, send us the original scans and we will resize the images.

A complete yearbook should come to about 20-25Mb at these settings.

Format
Please save them as a graphic file JPG or JPEG. The file name should be prefixed by the last two digits of the year, followed by the page number (i.e. 1965 would be 6501.jpg, 6502.jpg......6599.jpg). The front cover should be called frontcover.jpg. Following this naming convention allows us to easily add years to the index grid we make for each edition.

How to get the finished product to McGill University
At the present time we don't have an upload site that can be used.  We ask people to burn their results on a CD and mail us the CD. The mailing address is

Prof. C. Milligan
Faculty of Education
McGill University
3700 McTavish St.
Montreal QC Canada
H3A 1Y2

Please include a note saying who you are and what year is on the CD. If possible a small label on the CD itself would be appreciated.