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Scanning



From: Daniel Sokolow@MCGRAW-HILL on 01/04/2000 04:33 PM


To:   archives@listserv.muohio.edu
cc:
Subject:  Scanning

The problem I see with allowing scanning is that most of your patrons will not
bring portable scanners with them.  That means you're going to have to find a
way to allow your patrons to use your equipment, which may not even be in a
public area.

Then, of course, come the biggest problems...

"Can you show me how to work this?"

You have now put yourself in the position of having to spend more of your
valuable time teaching users how your scanning equipment works, fixing it when
they break it (and I assure you they will), keeping them from accessing your
files, etc.

"Do you have a disk I can use?"

You wanna spend your hard earned budget on dorks who don't think to come
prepared?  Pencils and paper are relatively cheap, but after a while the cost of
the disks could get prohibitive, especially if you're in an archive that deals
mostly in photographs and that's what people want.  More importantly, scans of
photos (depending on the resolution) can be awful darn big, and now you may be
talking more than one disk.

Photocopying is a pretty dumb science - press a button, zip zap you have a copy
of something.  Obviously exposure for sensitive materials is a concern, but you
can leave users to their own devices without having to worry so much.  Scanning
requires a bit more computer savvy, and I'd be really careful before I let
people scan randomly.

All of this is aside from the problems of protecting your collection from misuse
(publishing your stuff on the web without asking, for example.)

Daniel


Daniel Sokolow
Corporate Archivist
The McGraw-Hill Companies
1221 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
daniel_sokolow@mcgraw-hill.com

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