Special Focus
Book Scanners and Cradles: Links to Products and Reviews
Stephen
Chapman
Library Preservation
Harvard University
stephen_chapman@harvard.edu
Bookscanners and book cradles for digital cameras are of tremendous interest to the preservation community, which has a longstanding commitment to balance materials handling concerns against quality and production cost requirements. Given the tremendous variety among binding structures, sizes, and conditions of books; quality requirements for reproductions; and project budgets, it is unlikely that a one-size-fits-all solution will emerge. Thus, Harvard's Weissman Preservation Center has posted pages on its Web site to define functional requirements for book copying systems (whether analog or digital) and to monitor the commercial and custom-developed products that have proven viable when neither flatbed scanning nor disbinding is an option. The following table is reprinted with permission. Harvard welcomes comments.
| Book Scanners | Cradle design | Selected projects | Notes |
| 4DigitalBooks™ Digitizing Line | automatically turns pages | unknown (as of 2/02) | advertised throughput of ca. 800 pages per hour |
| i2s digiBook | various configurations with and without glass platen (like Zeutschel) |
Ransom Center (Gutenberg Bible), Library of Bordeaux, Library of Nantes |
configured in seven different models offering grayscale and RGB outputs, contact the U.S. reseller, IImage Retrieval, Inc. in Dallas, TX for more information |
| IBM Research Pro/3000 Scanner | customized Linhof book easel (see below) | Vatican Library, Library of Congress Federal Theatre Project collection |
Mintzer report, which includes image of easel (cradle); reported throughput of 80 images per day; Pro/3000 used in other projects; see articles at IBM site |
| BookEye | book must open to 180°, no glass | METAe (evaluation) | Muhlberger report notes, "Scanning bound books demonstrates painfully that books are not made for being opened 180°," and that in practice use of these cradles "can lead to broken bindings" |
| Minolta PS3000 | book must open to 180°, held in place by operator's hands | Internet Library of Early Journals (ILEJ), 1997-99 | ILEJ achieved scanning throughput of 80-100 pages per hour (final report, p. 27) |
| Minolta PS7000 | book must open to 180°, held in place by operator's hands | METAe (evaluation) | Muhlberger report notes, "Scanning bound books demonstrates painfully that books are not made for being opened 180°," and that in practice use of these cradles "can lead to broken bindings" |
| PARC Bookscanner | 90° book cradle and wedge platen | UC Berkeley Digital Library project | Steve Ready, et al., A Bookscanner for Fragile Books, "A Bookscanner for Fragile Books," Final Program and Proceedings, IS&T's PICS Conference, 2001, 172-176. |
| Zeutschel Omniscan x000 Book scanners | various configurations with and without glass platen | GDZ, HEDS | See, Tanner, et al., Higher Education Digitisation Service: access in the future, preserving the past - the UK perspective, p. 4. |
| Cradles | Design notes | Selected projects |
| exhibit-style cradles or foam supports | Used by Octavo Digital Imaging Laboratory to photograph rare books; see, Octavo collections. | |
| Hand-crafted cherry book cradle | constructed by John Riser | The University of Virginia Library Special Collections Department uses several cradles in their studio. See, Early American Fiction, "Equipment and Vendors" page. |
| Linhof Book Copying Easel |
Vatican Library (see IBM Pro/3000 above). AIA /Bassant modified Linhof Easel also available. |
|
| Manfred Mayer cradle | pages held flat by a perforated vacuum bar | Gutenberg Digital See, Lossau and Liebetruth, "Conservation Issues in Digital Imaging," Spectra, Fall 2000. |
| Preservation Book Cradle | designed by Alan Buchanan | British Library, Oxford University Library, Lund University Library. |
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