Facilities

The W. E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change is located in Welborn Hall on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It's conveniently situated near major roads and the intersection of two interstate highways, mid-way between Detroit and Chicago, with ready access to an international airport. The center has 7000 sq. ft. of monitored, electronically-secured, climate-controlled space, and is equipped with a dry-fire suppression archive, full-service semi-truck loading docks and ample parking.

The Department of Geography administers the WMU site license for ESRI ArcGIS Suite through the center. The center is equipped with the latest ArcGIS software and datasets.

The center has installed three Lumiere Jumboscan scanners, two fixed-mount for high resolution GIS work on maps, charts and air photos where greatest accuracy is desired, and one variable-mount for work dictating a more flexible setup. The JumboScan family of scanners are premier large-format digital scanners, employed wherever high geometric accuracy and color-space fidelity are required. Intense halogen light is directed in a narrow beam non-destructively—UV light is filtered and surface temperatures rise by no more than 1°C during the sweep of the scan. All our JumboScans are regularly calibrated and checked for accuracy against exacting standards.

One I2S Digibook Suprascan A0 scanner is also installed at the center and is equipped with a vacuum table, a light table and an auto-balancing book cradle unit for work where the ultimate accuracy of the JumboScans is not required. Glass slides, ortho-photos, artwork, sepia prints, plat drawings and hand-drawn schematics are just a few of the items that have been imaged on our Suprascan A0.

• Our GIS scanners(r) image maps at 500 ppi true optical with a maximim x-y distortion of 0.0002” or less across the focus of the lens.
• They are also capable of imaging air-photos in black and white at 1,000 ppi true optical with the same degree of accuracy.
• Scans are very fast—typically less than 90 seconds to image a large printed document in three bands (RGB); 30 seconds for bi-tonal.
• Our variable resolution Lumiere scanner(l) is set up with a cushioned table for imaging atlases, historical manuscripts, fine art, engineering drawings, blueprints, newspapers and other folded documents under glass.
• It can also be readily re-configured for larger work on top of a variety of work surfaces where lesser resolution (300 ppi at the minimum) is an option.
• Our I2S Suprascan A0 (r) is variable-resolution, capable of imaging the smallest objects at well over 1000 ppi optical as well as elongated objects, like these 18th to 20th century Chinese scrolls.
• The under-glass book cradle unit is ideal for production mode when its automatic save feature is enabled.
• A large vacuum table is another flexible option we have for imaging folded or distorted objects.
• Our electronic archives, capable of serving over 157 terabytes of near-line storage, hold all those images we've captured and enhanced. It's administered in partnership with the WMU Office of Information Technology.