BOOK SCANNERS: FROM PRINTED PAGE TO DIGITAL IMAGE
The right book scanner is required to convert words from the printed page to digital images.
Our first step towards digitizing hard copy books is deciding upon the best book scanner for our purposes. Our House Treasures rarely has any desire to permanently disassemble a book in order to complete a scan. Some book scanners require cannibalizing a book in order to scan it properly. The book’s spine is destroyed in the process to remove each page from the original binding. Once taken apart, it makes no sense to attempt to have a book rebound. This is usually a very costly proposition.
Types of book scanners that Our House Treasures considered:
- Sheet-fed or pass-through scanners. Book has to be permanently disassembled. Only one page is scanned at a time (although double-sided is an option).
- Flatbed scanners. Many models are unable to accommodate holding thicker and larger books on the glass scanning bed. Costs for a flatbed able to accommodate over-size books are high. In addition, constantly having to pick up the book, turn the page, and relocate to the flatbed scanner is very time consuming.
- Flat, overhead book scanners. These can scan larger works and are more economical to purchase. Books lying flat under an overhead scanner tend to have the pages “fluffed up.” When not lying perfectly flat, page images become skewed. Thus requiring additional “anti-distortion” software tools during post-processing. Placing any type of glass on top of each page to flatten it usually produces glare on the image.
Our scanner of choice is a non-destructive book scanner
At Our House Treasures, we want to produce the most consistent and uniform book images as possible. This reduces the amount of post-processing. Finding a non-destructive book scanner was our only option to convert printed pages to digital images. The non-destructive book scanning process protects the integrity of the spine and the pages of the original book. This scanning method holds the book in a V-shaped cradle and photographs it, rather than laying it flat and scanning it.
Our House Treasures settled upon a DIY Archivist Quill kit, purchased from Tenrec Builders. It took about a week to carefully follow instructions to build the scanner, but it’s a pretty nifty device. The V-shaped scanner bed can manage oversized volumes, including those with hundreds and hundreds of pages. A book can be placed “open-faced” on the scanner bed rather than a laying flat down on the surface of the scanner. A thin glass “V” serves as a platen to flatten the top pages of the book while pictures are taken. LED lights are projected down on the book, placed in position so no glare is reflected back to two strategically placed hi-def cameras.
Regarding the cameras we chose two Canon ELPH180s. They’re small and easily attachable to the frame of the scanner. Rather than using batteries for the cameras, we acquired converters to plug them in. Accompanying software provided by Canon for the ELPH180s allows control of the cameras through our mobile phones. Processing images via USB or wireless technology directly to the computer is a big time-saver. The ELPH180s may be a slightly older camera version, but they produce exactly the consistency of scans that we desire.
PHOTOS will be coming soon.
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