Hi gang, Generally, you are a very knowledgeable lot! Could some one suggest whether a hand held scanner would the best bet for scanning an old book? I do not like the idea of using a flat bed scanner because of the fragility of this 94 year old book about the Warne Family in America. The devices I have seen contain some local memory and I do not mind having to "stitch" together images to from an A4 page before OCR'ing the image so formed. Apart from a few pictures and a couple of hand drawn Coats of Arms, the rest is text. I see a hand held device as not having any ill effect on the spine, etc. I want to be able to produce a Word Document or PDF file from the scanned images of the pages. Any thoughts would be most welcome. Has any one used a digital camera for this purpose, for example? Many thanks Phil.

If all that you are interested in is collecting the text then a hand held would be fine. Not much good for pictures and so on, but good to know that people are careful with old books. It is worth remembering though that scanners have a 'fuzzy' focus, so you rarely need to crush something flat to get a reasonable picture - that's why some odd folk scan parts of their anatomy! ---- Peter Amsden, Argyll, Scotland ASAT Productions: http://www.asat.biz Researching Amsden World Wide Outline History: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~amsden Books I have written: http://www.btinternet.com/~amsden AllExperts: http://www.allexperts.com/displayExpert.asp?Expert=38044 Never dump originals - they may be all that is left after the computer age. > From: Phil Warn <philwarn@ntlworld.com> > Reply-To: SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com > Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 14:37:02 +0000 > To: SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: [SoG] Scanning an old book > Resent-From: SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com > Resent-Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 07:37:17 -0700 > > Hi gang, > > Generally, you are a very knowledgeable lot! > > Could some one suggest whether a hand held scanner would the best bet for > scanning an old book? > > I do not like the idea of using a flat bed scanner because of the fragility > of this 94 year old book about the Warne Family in America. > > The devices I have seen contain some local memory and I do not mind having > to "stitch" together images to from an A4 page before OCR'ing the image so > formed. > > Apart from a few pictures and a couple of hand drawn Coats of Arms, the > rest is text. > > I see a hand held device as not having any ill effect on the spine, etc. > > I want to be able to produce a Word Document or PDF file from the scanned > images of the pages. > > Any thoughts would be most welcome. > > Has any one used a digital camera for this purpose, for example? > > Many thanks > > Phil. > >

In message of 22 Mar, Phil Warn <philwarn@ntlworld.com> wrote: > Hi gang, > > Generally, you are a very knowledgeable lot! Let's start the ball rolling and then the real experts will come on the scene. > Could some one suggest whether a hand held scanner would the best bet > for scanning an old book? > > I do not like the idea of using a flat bed scanner because of the > fragility of this 94 year old book about the Warne Family in America. > > The devices I have seen contain some local memory and I do not mind > having to "stitch" together images to from an A4 page before OCR'ing > the image so formed. > > Apart from a few pictures and a couple of hand drawn Coats of Arms, > the rest is text. > > I see a hand held device as not having any ill effect on the spine, > etc. Hand held devices are not very good and work best on a flat surface. I'm sure you are right not to want to use a flat-bed scanner. The best commercial book scanners do it from overhead and this is the answer: use a digital camera. > I want to be able to produce a Word Document or PDF file from the > scanned images of the pages. The problem with cameras is that they use full colour which makes the files 32 times larger than they need be. All you need is single-bit images, black and white only, though you may have to use two or even four-bit grey-scale. You will have to convert the images from your camera to fewer bits (per pixel, thus reducing the colour content). Additionally you will want to get rid of any shading to the paper. This may need some clever software and I wonder if something like PhotoShop on the PC might do the trick (I don't normally use PCs so don't know the software). If you study CDROMs you will find that they get the average page into about 30,000 bytes so that a book of 200 pages occupies 6 Megabytes, a tiny proportion of a CDROM which will hold well over 600 Mbytes. The images are usually pure black and white and at a good resolution of 200 dots per inch, giving very clear printed pages at your end. You should be able to achieve something near this. The images from a camera will be in JPEG format. This is easily convertible into PDF files. The normal process is to set up a postscript printer driver on your machine then print to file. That postscript file can then easily be converted into PDF. It is a little more complicated to put all the pages into one PDF file but not impossible. > > Any thoughts would be most welcome. > > Has any one used a digital camera for this purpose, for example? Yes. Many libraries will now allow you to photo pages of (old) books instead of paying for expensive photocopies. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

Some more observations:- Peter Amsden Argyll, Scotland > From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <tim@powys.org> > Reply-To: SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com > Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:54:07 GMT > > In message of 22 Mar, Phil Warn <philwarn@ntlworld.com> wrote: > >> Hi gang, >> >> Generally, you are a very knowledgeable lot! > > Let's start the ball rolling and then the real experts will come on the > scene. > >> Could some one suggest whether a hand held scanner would the best bet >> for scanning an old book? >> >> I do not like the idea of using a flat bed scanner because of the >> fragility of this 94 year old book about the Warne Family in America. >> >> The devices I have seen contain some local memory and I do not mind >> having to "stitch" together images to from an A4 page before OCR'ing >> the image so formed. >> >> Apart from a few pictures and a couple of hand drawn Coats of Arms, >> the rest is text. >> >> I see a hand held device as not having any ill effect on the spine, >> etc. > > Hand held devices are not very good and work best on a flat surface. Depends on the device. > > I'm sure you are right not to want to use a flat-bed scanner. > > The best commercial book scanners do it from overhead and this is the > answer: use a digital camera. Commercial scanners are expensive - the digital camera idea is better. > >> I want to be able to produce a Word Document or PDF file from the >> scanned images of the pages. > > The problem with cameras is that they use full colour which makes the > files 32 times larger than they need be. All you need is single-bit > images, black and white only, though you may have to use two or even > four-bit grey-scale. There are digital camera that can shoot in monochrome. This is not a bad idea, but if you are shooting type face you may well need a tripod - not permitted in most archive resources. > > You will have to convert the images from your camera to fewer bits (per > pixel, thus reducing the colour content). Additionally you will want > to get rid of any shading to the paper. This may need some clever > software and I wonder if something like PhotoShop on the PC might do the > trick (I don't normally use PCs so don't know the software). PhotoShop Auto Level should iron out most of the problems. > > If you study CDROMs you will find that they get the average page into > about 30,000 bytes so that a book of 200 pages occupies 6 Megabytes, a > tiny proportion of a CDROM which will hold well over 600 Mbytes. The > images are usually pure black and white and at a good resolution of 200 > dots per inch, giving very clear printed pages at your end. You should > be able to achieve something near this. The fact is that most shots will be able to inserted into a PDF. > > The images from a camera will be in JPEG format. Not necessarily. Some cameras can save as Tiff and Raw files. >This is easily > convertible into PDF files. The normal process is to set up a > postscript printer driver on your machine then print to file. That > postscript file can then easily be converted into PDF. It is a little > more complicated to put all the pages into one PDF file but not > impossible. Don't forget to make some kind of index for your PDF. Without this, searching can take ages. >> >> Any thoughts would be most welcome. >> >> Has any one used a digital camera for this purpose, for example? > > Yes. Many libraries will now allow you to photo pages of (old) books > instead of paying for expensive photocopies. With the tripod reservations mentioned above. >

Hi Tim: At 3:54 pm +0000 22/3/05, Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote: >Yes. Many libraries will now allow you to photo pages of (old) books >instead of paying for expensive photocopies. Intriguingly, the National Archives at Kew will allow you to photograph documents as long as you use a *digital* camera (without flash or tripod). Why the restriction to digital cameras is beyond me, and beyond the member of their staff who remarked on it to me when I was registering my digital camera with them. cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/

I have digitally photographed the pages of an old book and put the result though OCR software and finished up with an MSWord document, I hope this helps Richard -----Original Message----- From: Phil Warn [mailto:philwarn@ntlworld.com] Sent: 22 March 2005 14:37 To: SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [SoG] Scanning an old book Hi gang, Generally, you are a very knowledgeable lot! Could some one suggest whether a hand held scanner would the best bet for scanning an old book? I do not like the idea of using a flat bed scanner because of the fragility of this 94 year old book about the Warne Family in America. The devices I have seen contain some local memory and I do not mind having to "stitch" together images to from an A4 page before OCR'ing the image so formed. Apart from a few pictures and a couple of hand drawn Coats of Arms, the rest is text. I see a hand held device as not having any ill effect on the spine, etc. I want to be able to produce a Word Document or PDF file from the scanned images of the pages. Any thoughts would be most welcome. Has any one used a digital camera for this purpose, for example? Many thanks Phil.

Another alternative would be the Plustek Optibook 3600 book scanner, which scans to the edge of the platen which can be placed up to the inner edge of a page. A little expensive at £233.83 (incl VAT) via the National Archivist web site: http://shop.nationalarchivist.com/acatalog/Products_Book_Scanner_37.html where there is a description and photograph. If the rest of the book was carefully supported and it was not too tightly bound, it should not be damaged . . . This would make a good addition to the SoG library if someone would sponsor it! Cheers, John John Addis-Smith Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, England

Although the National Archivist were the first, I see that others in the UK have started to stock the Plustek Optibook 3600 book scanner at much cheaper prices. See First Call Photographic: http://www.firstcall-photographic.co.uk/pp/Digital_Photography/Photo_Scanners/Plustek_Opticbook_3600_Book_Scanner.html who are only asking £169.99 incl VAT with free UK postage. (I have just done a dummy purchase to clarify this). Cheers, John John Addis-Smith Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, England

In message <3lk041tdehup96mgsp5p6mg04qspfbagm4@4ax.com>, John Addis-Smith <genl@addisgen.com> writes >Another alternative would be the Plustek Optibook 3600 >book scanner, which scans to the edge of the platen which can be >placed up to the inner edge of a page. A little expensive at £233.83 >(incl VAT) via the National Archivist web site: > >http://shop.nationalarchivist.com/acatalog/Products_Book_Scanner_37.html >where there is a description and photograph. If the rest of the book >was carefully supported and it was not too tightly bound, it should >not be damaged . . . > >This would make a good addition to the SoG library if someone would >sponsor it! All that is, is a flatbed scanner that will scan to the edge of the platten area. It still requires considerable man handling of the book. Old and valuable books will certainly be damaged by using it. Any books that are already weak at the binding will be destroyed by using it. Having had the pleasure of scanning several hundred of the Society's books over the last few weeks, I can assure everyone that use of such a scanner would have resulted in many of those (already weak) books being in extremely worse for the wear condition. An overhead book scanner is the only realistic option, as the book sits in its normal relaxed position, and only the pages are turned, without it having to be picked up and stressed for each page scan. Regards Rod -- Rod Neep Archive CD Books : http://www.archivecdbooks.org

Hi Phil, Having used a handheld scanner in my 'early days', I found it very hard to scan absolutely straight, and to stitch together things well. This is especially true on a book. I regularly use a digital camera to photograph documents. You need to make sure it has a close-up setting - my Fuji for example works from about 1/2m to 2m on close-up, but my older 'cheapie' focussed only at 20 cm - still very good, but not enough for an A4 page, which had to be done in 2 halves. If possible, it would be worth setting up a mini rig, to do the job. Perhaps a frame, to carefully hold the page you are photographing flat, with something to hold the rest of the book open, but not full flat. You will need very good lighting, an experiment with both regular (incandescent) lamps, fluorescent lamps, Daylight bulbs, and perhaps even a mini fluorescent 'torch' lamp, to correct the contrast and remove background colours. You can try the flash too, that sometimes helps. As has been said, the main problem is the size of the images, being in full colour. There was a mention of Paint-shop-Pro or similar being used to convert the picture to two colour (B&W). If the background is reasonably white, this is very possible, but shades of grey and brown make this a very haphazard operation. PSP is however very good at colour replacement, so if the book is lit well, I am sure you could make sure the text is very black and the background some other colour that can be swapped out. However, a good OCR program should be able to extract the text from a full colour picture. so you may not need to mess about processing the picture. I use OmniPage Pro, which does some wonderful things. The newer versions are pretty good. The usual caveats should apply to a family history drawn up by a third party <g> Good luck Pickard Trepess Nagykanizsa, Hungary ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Warn" <philwarn@ntlworld.com> > Could some one suggest whether a hand held scanner would the best bet for > scanning an old book? > > I do not like the idea of using a flat bed scanner because of the fragility > of this 94 year old book about the Warne Family in America. > > The devices I have seen contain some local memory and I do not mind having > to "stitch" together images to from an A4 page before OCR'ing the image so > formed. > > Apart from a few pictures and a couple of hand drawn Coats of Arms, the > rest is text. > > I see a hand held device as not having any ill effect on the spine, etc. > > I want to be able to produce a Word Document or PDF file from the scanned > images of the pages. > > Any thoughts would be most welcome. > > Has any one used a digital camera for this purpose, for example?