Someone asked me for advice on caring for a personal collection of books. On my library's Website, we have several useful links for books and other materials. The Library of Congress has a page for the non-librarian that offers useful advice for storing and protecting your books, audiovisual, and other documents. It also offers tips for how to salvage your treasures in the event of a disaster, such as water damage or fire.
Both the Alaska Historical Library and Indiana University have put their book repair manuals online. Although the manuals are used by professionals, they offer useful guidance for everyone on how to deal with such tragedies as ripped pages, removing tape, fixing loose hinges, and much more. If you have truly valuable pieces (either monetary or sentimental), it might be a good idea to consult a professional conservator -- but they don't come cheap.
And for anyone with documents or pictures relating to our family, I am more than happy to take them off your hands -- the older the better. One day soon I hope to get back to Casimir's Dream.
Back to Casimir's Dream--Yay!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there is a very simple answer to this but how are books scanned? I am thinking of Kindle, how does it work. Do they have someone with a scanner doing it page by page?
ReplyDeleteMost books today are produced from digital files -- they are "born digital." Making them available online or through a Kindle-like device is usually relatively straight-forward. It is like a document on your computer -- you can read it on your monitor or print it out.
ReplyDeleteIf the book doesn't exist digitally already, things get more complicated. For small projects, a flatbed or book cradle scanner is used. Cradles hold the book facing up, which is easier on the spine. A picture is taken of each page. Optionally, optical character recognition (OCR) technology may then be used to "read" the book so a computer can index each word, making the full text searchable.
For large projects, a robotic scanner is used. This is what Google is doing to digitize millions of older books in libraries. The book is placed in the cradle and a mechanism turns the page. High end scanners can go through thousands of pages an hour. Watching one in action can by hypnotic. For some demonstrations, see http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1B3MOZA_enUS335US337&um=1&q=book%20cradle%20scanner&ndsp=21&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iv&start=0#
Some operations validate or replace the OCR with human typists. Two typists will type the same page, then a computer will compare the files to look for errors. Other technologies are also being used. One uses captcha technology (those hard-to-read letters or numbers that Web sites ask you to reproduce to verify you are a human -- which is also used by this blog) to find imperfect images from scanning and let multiple users "vote" on what it says.
If you are interested in buying your own robotic scanner, bring your checkbook. A decent machine can cost more than $100,000.