Companies which specialise in the scanning of books and documents will often receive enquiries from prospective clients who want to have material scanned. This material often includes rare, confidential or fragile books and documents and clients are understandably concerned that no harm will come to these valuable items. It is essential that the process of scanning is carried out carefully with no risk of damage to the material being scanned.
It’s obviously important to look into any company that may scan the books for you by looking at their qualifications. An ISO 9001:2000 is a good indication of a high quality scanning firm, as their job is checked by a third party, plus they have proved that they produce great results. However, there might be a little more than that which will be of concern to you, such as how they manage fragile and easily damaged books.
Many professional book scanning companies can have what is often refered to as an overhead scanner. It is basically a bookscanner that permits the publication to be laid down flat face upwards, while a state of the art digital camera photographs and looks at each and every page individually, to gather the details for OCR requirements. OCR, in case you are unaware, is the most modern solution to scan a physical file and get the textual content data onto hard drive so the file is personal computer understandable and textual content searchable.
Since the over head scanner is, for all intents and purposes, a top quality, technologically advanced digital camera, this means the pages won’t be exposed to close scanning devices, which is a problem for some clients due to concerns about the pages being ruined or faded because.
As soon as the overhead scanning is done, the electronic files are then changed to the data format of choice, and that is typically PDF or JPEG. After this is done, any cleaning or changes in contrast will be done and checked by quality control staff before sending to the client.
That is the general procedure when using a book scanner with rare books, but keep in mind this can vary from company to company.
Using book scanners to preserve rare books is a method that is quite risk-free and does the least harm to the book’s delicate pages. After the book has been scanned using an electronic digital file format, the book can still be appreciated and enjoyed for decades in the future, and what could be better than that for a genuine and exceptional work of art?
Leave a Reply