Over the past ten years, I have made an effort to build an image library with which to teach early China and Chinese religions. Both at Cambridge and at Reed, I have owned copy stands and spotlights, shooting my own slides that now number about thirteen hundred. I use these slides so often that I always have slide projectors on permanent loan from Reed's Audiovisual Department.
Needless to say, the collection is bulky and hard to organize, despite the fact that I have kept a computerized index throughout the process of building up the collection. I am also limited in how I present the images as they are static. For many reasons, I have long wanted to improve my teaching performance by digitizing my collection, and these reasons include but are not limited to the following:
1. I can better utilize high tech classrooms with their multimedia equipment.
2. I can increase the flexibility of how images are used. For example, I can highlight sections of images and incorporate the images with charts, diagrams and other computer-generated graphics. I can also more easily access an image during a conference in answer to particular questions.
3. I can better organize my collection using Portfolio image database software. For example, I can search for related images and store series of images together. During preparation, I can work on lectures and their images together on the computer rather than scramble after slides once the lecture is written.
4. I can rid myself of bulky, noisy projectors.
5. I can add to my image collection in a much more convenient manner, using my scanner rather than setting up copy stands and lights and waiting until I have enough images to fill a role of film, only then to process it, crop the resulting images, etc.
I have now digitized my collection and have used the images in Introduction to the History of Religions, in Early Chinese Cosmology, and in the Humanities 230 lectures. The difference in preparation and presentation is significant, and other faculty have complimented me on the clarity and flexibility of my images.
I can now add to my collection much faster than before, and improving the images on computer has been a bigger advantage than I initially realized. I can quickly scan new images or use my digital camera to shoot them, adding them to my existing database. For example, I am just this week shooting many pictures of the Tibetan monks' sand mandala, adding them to my scanned images of Tibetan religions and using them in the classroom while the monks are still here. I could never do that using slides.
I use Paintshop Pro and so can sharpen the contrast and remove scratches from older pictures. For example, I often use an image of the Wei River Valley to show where the state of Qin began its unification of China. By increasing the contrast, the protective mountain ranges in the distant beyond the fertile valley suddenly became much more visible, and the students could see for themselves how geography can assist a state's ambitions. I couldn't sharpen the contrast way when it was limited to the slide medium.
Time has not yet allowed me to shift my images into the Portfolio database, and I am currently using the 'View as slide show' function in MSWord for my presentations. (I have purchased Portfolio and will endeavor to set up a database once classes are finished.)
There has also been one unforeseen disadvantage. My slides were outsourced to a local company, and while most of the images came back without problems, some were fuzzier than they had been. According to other faculty members, the machine that digitizes the slides sometimes fails to position the slide firmly, like a slide projector that doesn't tightly fix the slide into place when being shown, thereby changing the focal point. Fortunately this problem has not been major, although there have been a few times when I scanned the original sources (if I had them) instead of using the digitized slide images. Yet on the whole, I am still happy with the results of digitizing my slide collection. I recommend it highly.