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OT: Scanning hardbacked books
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My dad's been doing the family tree for some time, and having acheived
quite a lot he's still going. Recently, he's got a book from 1908 that
has a lot of information about the family. Problem is, he has to keep
borrowing it from the library as only about 200 were printed and most
have been shipped to america. This means signing waivers and renewing a
little to regular than is useful.
Should he wish to scan the book for later perusal, what's the best
method? We have a flatbed scanner, but it's not really usable. It would
most likely damage the book quite badly.
What's the best way to scan an old, hardbacked book without damaging
it? I thought one of the drag hand scanners might work, but that will
obviously need some practise and can be error prone (too fast/slow on
the scanner). Anyone else tried something like this?
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The British Library have a couple of gigapixel digital cameras set up
specifically for digitising books and manuscripts and converting them
to online equivalents[1]. Try asking if they have the book concerned,
and if so, they might have already digitised it. If not, they may well
be willing to let you bring the book down and convert it for you (they
have some face-up photocopiers too).
[1] I designed the metadata/workflow system for this, which is how I
know.
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Why not just photograph the pages with a digital camera ! The pics will
probably view OK on a monitor or even be printed..
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Quicker, too.
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That's not a bad idea at all. Thanks!
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Indeed. I've been photocopying documents this way since I bought a digital
camera. If I need a hardcopy at a later date I print them in fax mode which
automagically resizes it for A4 and printing in monochrome.
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web-search.
As in "web-search have tried something like this".
There's a big project, based in Oxford, to digitize a load of old books.
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Why do you assume the flatbed will damage the book?
Try with a modern book of about the same size, with the scanner placed on a
shoebox and the book open to only 90 degrees, the page to be scanned on the
glass and the book hanging out of the side - difficult to describe but easy
to do.
This way the book doesn't have to be open flat, which I assume is your
issue, though it only works if the margin is greater than the frame around
the glass; I've never had a problem with this on my Epson.
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The book isn't quite A4 size from the looks, and I don't think it'll
fit on the scanner like that. The photo option mentioned might be the
way to go.
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Digital camera, then feed the image into your OCR of choice
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