Skip to main content

View Post [edit]

Poster: MAHameed Date: Feb 11, 2005 1:12am
Forum: opensource Subject: Info on methods and technology for digitizing books

I am working on a project for scanning old books and broadsheet newspapers in graphic and OCR modes. The material to be scanned will be in English and Arabic-script languages. I need all available information on methods, techniques and equipment that are mostly being used.

Reply [edit]

Poster: molly Date: Mar 3, 2005 7:43am
Forum: opensource Subject: Re: Info on methods and technology for digitizing books

There are several kinds of digitizing systems out on the market. The Million Books Project uses planetary scanners (I believe they are Minolta). Our pilot project in Toronto uses Kirtas' page turning robot. As you no doubt have discovered, there are pluses and minuses to each system in speed of capture, output quality, destructiveness to the book, maintenance, and what kind of text it can scan.

It's really up to you about which one you want to get, and will mostly depend on how big the things you want to scan are, and what you want the output to be (color or b/w, jpeg or tiff, etc.).

Regardless, we'd be happy to host the materials if you'd like to donate them to the archive!

-best
Molly

Reply [edit]

Poster: MAHameed Date: Mar 4, 2005 2:44pm
Forum: opensource Subject: Re: Info on methods and technology for digitizing books

Molly,
I shall be grateful if you allow me to discuss some issues directly with you.
My email address is: mah@brain.net.pk

M. A. Hameed

Reply [edit]

Poster: piggy Date: Oct 21, 2005 5:21am
Forum: opensource Subject: Re: Info on methods and technology for digitizing books

HOW do I donate my book scans? I've started putting my books through Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofing, but I'd like to put high-quality scans somewhere permanent as well. DP only archives low-res monochromes.

All the books I'm preparing have PG clearances as public domain.

I've scanned 15 so far (of a collection of about 100), and have created djvu editions of two so far. I don't have the commercial version, so they aren't what you'd call highly compressed--no better than tgz of png images.

I'm also like to connect with other people interested in creating digital facsimiles of books.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Diana Hamilton Date: Oct 21, 2005 5:37am
Forum: opensource Subject: Re: Info on methods and technology for digitizing books

I think that the contribution system for text might be open now along with the new movie system:
See http://www.archive.org/contribute.php
where it says
Your contributions (NEW SYSTEM)
Create and upload a new movie or book.