George Washington University
Kirtas Technologies is helping GWU to digitize rare Middle Eastern texts from its own library and from that of Georgetown University. Here is a quick video from the Open House on December 1st, 2009.
Kirtas in Algeria
(Translated from the original French)
Digitization is the key to heritage preservation "said Lotfi Belkhir earlier press conference has organized at the Hotel Hilton, the company Kirtas Technologies in collaboration with its subsidiary Kirtas Maghreb in Algeria and installed it immediately adds" by scanning, I do not want to hear 'scanning' but image processing, quality control, OCR and finally Metadata "
Lotfi Belkhir, pure product of the Algerian education system, has obtained his specialty of theoretical physics at the University of Bab Ezzouar as a major promotion, which allows him to get a scholarship to the United States and landing in Xerox where he developed the 'Golden Gate', an automatic book scanner that allows the filing of 2 international patents.
The idea was good and Xerox had some financial difficulties which allowed Lotfi Belkhir create Kirtas Technologies and to become world leader in this niche.
"Giving new life to old books" because he said "with this method, the book value and may be available to everyone and so it gives new impetus to research." And to better explain his concept, he said that "we had to create new standards for scanning by introducing the concept of metadata. Example in support, he speaks of image processing, which is software designed entirely by its teams. "Image processing improves the readings but also to remove yellowing and age spots. He adds that "once it has finished, we can print the book as many times as you wish. This solution is also good for old books that is handled with great caution rules but also books that no longer exist. "Kirtas introduced beyond the scanning and other treatment, the concept of metadata. Metadata, what is it? The term metadata is used to define all technical and descriptive information to documents added to better describe them. And there are in the world, several standardization bodies. Metadata is the core technology for indexing of digital resources, therefore knowledge. The metadata schema is used as proposed by the organization Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and is called usually the Dublin Core. It standardizes the use of fifteen descriptive fields: Title of document - Author (s) - Label - Release Date - Description ... In short, the metadata includes a number of "descriptors" which can make them more easily identifiable (accessible) and manipulated (interoperable, reusable, durable, adaptable). What makes Lotfi Belkhir say that "we can do a book that contains excerpts from several books through metadata and adds it to better explain his concept that" once a scan has high definition, the book can be put in different forms including that we do not know yet. " Moreover, in this context, Kirtas Maghreb has some drivers on behalf of the University Library in Algiers or not less than four books have been scanned and processed. Lamine, Khaled Boufedji, General Manager of the newly created company in Algiers said that "we have two machines in Algiers which can scan up to 100 pounds per day," adding that "we have trained staff so that they can use hardware and software "Asked whether Kirtas sells machines, Lotfi Belkhir said" we sell our machines, but we continue to scan books for business. Currently we are working with leading academic institutions, public and private world. . Also says it "we have a platform OCR the most successful in the world and it supports the Arab but also other language." Asked whether Kirtas has projects in Algeria, Khaled Lamine-Boufedji tells us that "Yes, now I keep in touch with a number of Algerian institutions. My hope is that our services are actually taken seriously by the Algerian institutions, including those who intend to implement programs to scan documents and national archives. . In addition to finally settle the problems of the State Civil Kirtas solution can bring up to date the old and rare books without the original can be manipulated. Finally, Kirtas Technologies is today one of those Microsoft customers, the United Nations, The British Library, the company Novartis, the presidential library of Yeltsin in Russia, the library year Malik Fahd Saudi Arabia, and countless other academic institutions and culture throughout the world, with more than 200 installations worldwide.
