Getting it right – How to start digitizing on a shoestring

Abstract

Digitizing books is one of the hypes around us. But the understanding of it is not widespread.

When digital capture of images started it was a rocket science. The machines were bulky and extremely expensive. Fast forward 20 years and almost anyone has in her pocket a capable tool for capturing images.

But do we understand it? Everyone – especially the producers of equipment – talk about resolution, megapixels, color accuracy and numbers, lots of numbers.

How to understand them? How to get digitization right? I want to let anyone grasp the meaning of the most important of those numbers in a test setup made out of two chairs, four LED strip lights, a few pieces of foam board and a power supply for the lights – and a cell phone with a camera.

This is not meant to replace a professional scanner but to use a phone everyone uses on daily basis to show what factors are involved in setting up a proper station for digitization of library materials.

The outcome of the poster was that the spectators got an aha feeling of understanding what and why they needed when scanning words.

For more info contact Tomasz Gruszkowski t.gruszkowski@bn.org.pl IFLA PAC Center for digital preservation at National Library of Poland