Veridian Launches Automated METS/ALTO Conversion Service

Boston, MA, February 20, 2015 --(PR.com)-- Veridian (veridiansoftware.com), a newspaper digitization software and services company based in New Zealand, is launching a new service to create low-cost, automated, page-level METS/ALTO files for digital newspaper collections. METS/ALTO is the industry-standard schema for newspaper digitization used and maintained by the Library of Congress. The company built the conversion capabilities in response to market demand for an affordable way to generate page-level METS/ALTO. Until now conversion costs have been between US$0.50 – $0.60 per page. Veridian’s Automated METS/ALTO service costs less than one-quarter of this cost.

Academic, public, and special libraries will benefit from this service as it provides a cost effective alternative to static PDF/digital image display of digitized newspaper collections. METS/ALTO allows a greater level of user engagement with a digitized collection, primarily fast, accurate search capabilities and keyword highlighting. Veridian collections also feature crowdsourcing functionality such as user text correction, tagging and commenting, and the addition of personal lists.

Stefan Boddie, Managing Director at Veridian, believes that “this really changes the newspaper digitization space by making METS/ALTO accessible to libraries that haven’t been able to afford it.” He continues, “libraries with good quality images, PDFs, TIFFs, or microfilm are perfect candidates for conversion to METS/ALTO.”

To promote the new service, Veridian is granting free conversion of up to 10,000 digital newspaper pages from PDF or other digital image to METS/ALTO including setting up and hosting a digital collection in Veridian Software for a period of 2 years. The grant is open to any academic, public, or special library interested in converting their existing PDF newspaper collection. Applications are being accepted now through March 31, 2015. Information and the application form can be found on the company website at veridiansoftware.com/grant-opportunity.

About Veridian
Veridian, trading as DL Consulting, has been helping libraries around the world retain their position as critical and important community resources since 2002. Our Veridian digitization services give libraries the ability to preserve archives of historic material and deliver the content as a digital collection to their communities. We have experience delivering large projects for prestigious university libraries, large state public libraries, and national libraries in the U.S. and abroad. DL Consulting is based in Hamilton, New Zealand, with an office in Honolulu, Hawaii.