An idea for preservation and a proposal for the future of the VCF's library of written media.
Hello all, I don't speak much on here often enough but I have been on the list and in the community for a little while now. Something came to mind the other night when I was doing research on preservation of physical book printed/written media and came to find not only several different kinds of methods and businesses that can scan these forms of media to a digital form but there are also scanners that exist which can do this job well without it being destructive to the books. The issue of course is that these scanners are by no means cheap for the average small scale user wanting to preserve a few of his books/manuals and some of the services out there that can offer this are either not much cheaper and/or only offer the destructive method of scanning this media (I.E. unbinding books to scan individual pages). After some time thinking about this, hearing some colleges and old libraries/research facilities having these for their own preservation efforts a thought came to mind...Why shouldn't the VCF have one for their own preservation efforts as well? The idea is simple enough, an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media, manuals, history, research, and more which can be put into digital form and be accessible to anyone who needs it without difficulty. It can help many countless individuals in the community who would need that information but isn't uploaded or documented anywhere else. A form of digital preservation and online library could be a great benefit to everyone. Finally, a further benefit is those who have their own materials they wish to preserve as well could do so with a suggested donation to the museum as well. It can be a service for other collectors who want to preserve their media as well and could even be added to the main library! Hosting of these materials could also be done and uploaded to archive.org to shoulder off the need of hosting our own site (unless desired of the community). It's a benefit with no real downside to the museum or the community at large. I know there will be some finer details to discuss and some minor issues that might come to light (especially anything involving possible copyright) but aside from this it can be a useful service for everyone. I just wanted to bring this idea forward to see what everyone thinks of it. Thanks for reading this out! -Lou
It’s a great idea, but the question of funding and manpower come immediately to mind. As it stands, we have a great resource in Jason Scott at Archive.org, whom we can send things we believe are not yet archived. I love that VCF has a reference library that visitors should be able to access, but I think that professional archiving of media best left to those who already have the time, inclination and proper equipment. On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 9:58 AM Lou via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello all, I don't speak much on here often enough but I have been on the list and in the community for a little while now. Something came to mind the other night when I was doing research on preservation of physical book printed/written media and came to find not only several different kinds of methods and businesses that can scan these forms of media to a digital form but there are also scanners that exist which can do this job well without it being destructive to the books. The issue of course is that these scanners are by no means cheap for the average small scale user wanting to preserve a few of his books/manuals and some of the services out there that can offer this are either not much cheaper and/or only offer the destructive method of scanning this media (I.E. unbinding books to scan individual pages).
After some time thinking about this, hearing some colleges and old libraries/research facilities having these for their own preservation efforts a thought came to mind...Why shouldn't the VCF have one for their own preservation efforts as well?
The idea is simple enough, an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media, manuals, history, research, and more which can be put into digital form and be accessible to anyone who needs it without difficulty. It can help many countless individuals in the community who would need that information but isn't uploaded or documented anywhere else. A form of digital preservation and online library could be a great benefit to everyone.
Finally, a further benefit is those who have their own materials they wish to preserve as well could do so with a suggested donation to the museum as well. It can be a service for other collectors who want to preserve their media as well and could even be added to the main library! Hosting of these materials could also be done and uploaded to archive.org to shoulder off the need of hosting our own site (unless desired of the community). It's a benefit with no real downside to the museum or the community at large.
I know there will be some finer details to discuss and some minor issues that might come to light (especially anything involving possible copyright) but aside from this it can be a useful service for everyone. I just wanted to bring this idea forward to see what everyone thinks of it.
Thanks for reading this out!
-Lou
but there are also scanners that exist which can do this job well without it being destructive to the books. The issue of course is that these scanners are by no means cheap for the average small scale user wanting to
I had gotten a bunch of SCUBA diving magazines donated to me by someone for the purpose of scanning. Maybe 200 pounds of them. And while they had some decent value on the market to collectors, there was a time tradeoff. I looked at those double camera book imaging setups, but a person has to flip every page. Vacuum assisted stuff, aluminum t-slot extrusion is sexy. But at last, the fastest way to accomplish the task at the best price (free) was to borrow friends duplex page scanner from Brother. So I cut off all the bindings. It saved so much time, it was worth it. And now the internet at large gets a high res copy of the magazines. The data is preserved as long as the copies on the internet stay around, which who knows how long that will be. Spreading the data collection to more people helps. Archive.org, torrents, mirrors, etc. ALSO, since it's so time intensive.... I think the way to really accomplish large scanning missions is have volunteers do it from home and not go to some place to do it. To make the most of ones time it's best to multitask. My friend let me borrow his sexy little Brother scanning machine that could do full duplex. I used a couple of computers (thanks to another VCF member!) to handle the OCR side of the software, so I could keep the network attached scanner as busy as possible when I had time. I would rotate through the computers triggering a scan, and they would scan and process it. I could keep 4 computers busy usually given how long it took for the OCR process. Also it allowed me to scan 4, then do the next four the next time I passed by the setup. Black and white old computer docs would be WAY easier and faster than this full color stuff I was doing. It's best if you can do some other task while scanning, so all your time isn't focused on it. Chop the bindings, stack the goods. Then when you come by drop in another batch, click go. So you can work on something else while feeding all this through. So your time isn't stuck on that one task, unless you have a lot of time. Work from homers could possible just feed stacks all day while doing other tasks, etc. It took weeks and weeks to scan through 4 banker boxes stuffed with magazines. I sold the watch ads and other bits to pay for the chopper which ran about $150. https://archive.org/details/diving_magazines Used copy machines might be able to do duplex scanning way faster, but unsure of the software support. I used Abbyy Finereader 11 for the OCR. Pack in for the Brother, works with Epson software.
Just a thank you for bringing it up. It may yields some new ideas or rethink. I'm one that values this old material and do lament the chopping up of the originals to get things scanned. Maybe magazines that would wear and fade but I've seen things destroyed that should not necessarily been done. Before I knew better, in the first year I was involved in VCF, I assisted in an effort to scan some remarkable Burroughs manuals- removing the pages from the most amazing bindings, which were trashed, and sending the beautiful pages to archive.org. Archive.org is awsome, and the material belongs there, but there had to be a better way for this particular set. Lets keep talking about these issues. On 5/13/2022 9:58 AM, Lou via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Hello all, I don't speak much on here often enough but I have been on the list and in the community for a little while now. Something came to mind the other night when I was doing research on preservation of physical book printed/written media and came to find not only several different kinds of methods and businesses that can scan these forms of media to a digital form but there are also scanners that exist which can do this job well without it being destructive to the books. The issue of course is that these scanners are by no means cheap for the average small scale user wanting to preserve a few of his books/manuals and some of the services out there that can offer this are either not much cheaper and/or only offer the destructive method of scanning this media (I.E. unbinding books to scan individual pages).
After some time thinking about this, hearing some colleges and old libraries/research facilities having these for their own preservation efforts a thought came to mind...Why shouldn't the VCF have one for their own preservation efforts as well?
The idea is simple enough, an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media, manuals, history, research, and more which can be put into digital form and be accessible to anyone who needs it without difficulty. It can help many countless individuals in the community who would need that information but isn't uploaded or documented anywhere else. A form of digital preservation and online library could be a great benefit to everyone.
Finally, a further benefit is those who have their own materials they wish to preserve as well could do so with a suggested donation to the museum as well. It can be a service for other collectors who want to preserve their media as well and could even be added to the main library! Hosting of these materials could also be done and uploaded to archive.org to shoulder off the need of hosting our own site (unless desired of the community). It's a benefit with no real downside to the museum or the community at large.
I know there will be some finer details to discuss and some minor issues that might come to light (especially anything involving possible copyright) but aside from this it can be a useful service for everyone. I just wanted to bring this idea forward to see what everyone thinks of it.
Thanks for reading this out!
-Lou
On 5/13/22 22:32, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Just a thank you for bringing it up. It may yields some new ideas or rethink. I'm one that values this old material and do lament the chopping up of the originals to get things scanned. Maybe magazines that would wear and fade but I've seen things destroyed that should not necessarily been done.
Before I knew better, in the first year I was involved in VCF, I assisted in an effort to scan some remarkable Burroughs manuals- removing the pages from the most amazing bindings, which were trashed, and sending the beautiful pages to archive.org. Archive.org is awsome, and the material belongs there, but there had to be a better way for this particular set.
Lets keep talking about these issues.
The goals of preserving the content vs. preserving the book are usually at odds. It's not an easy judgment call to make. We have a large but dormant (due to lack of volunteers) scanning operation at LSSM. The best I've been able to come up with is that it's ok to destroy a book in order to preserve the content if other copies can be found. But that doesn't seem to make it any easier. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Dean, Doug, Dave and others have all made the points I was going to. This has been an issue as long as I have been involved with VCF and was an issue long before I arrived! Like others, I have a hard time destroying a book or manual to preserve it. I understand the need but it is still counterintuitive to rip apart something you’re “saving!” :-) The single biggest issue is resources. Get the money for a scanner? Need the bodies to do the work. Get the bodies to do the work? Need the time from those bodies to do this massive undertaking. Get the time? Now you need to coordinate the time, place, bodies and material. Can’t have people just hanging out in the warehouse doing this. No bathroom facilities, gotta deal with food, no CO in the space so can’t have the public involved. Warehouse doesn’t have the room, electrical, cleanliness for this endeavor, so that means moving everything to a place that does. It all comes down to logistics. Jason Perkins k owe this better than any of us, and I’m sure he can speak far more eloquently than I can on this issue. None of these things changes the need for this work to be done nor does it diminish the importance of the material and preserving it for the future. But that doesn’t mean VCF is in a position to do it, at least not at the moment. Perhaps getting the material to a person, persons or organization that can do it may be a better use of our limited resources. Tony Bogan Sent from my iPhone
On May 13, 2022, at 11:35 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 5/13/22 22:32, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Just a thank you for bringing it up. It may yields some new ideas or rethink. I'm one that values this old material and do lament the chopping up of the originals to get things scanned. Maybe magazines that would wear and fade but I've seen things destroyed that should not necessarily been done. Before I knew better, in the first year I was involved in VCF, I assisted in an effort to scan some remarkable Burroughs manuals- removing the pages from the most amazing bindings, which were trashed, and sending the beautiful pages to archive.org. Archive.org is awsome, and the material belongs there, but there had to be a better way for this particular set. Lets keep talking about these issues.
The goals of preserving the content vs. preserving the book are usually at odds. It's not an easy judgment call to make. We have a large but dormant (due to lack of volunteers) scanning operation at LSSM. The best I've been able to come up with is that it's ok to destroy a book in order to preserve the content if other copies can be found. But that doesn't seem to make it any easier.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Based on this discussion, having it come down to volunteers on volunteer time is the most realistic way to archive our paper content. That being said, the Workshop events could be put to use for those who want to take on the task. I have volunteered to do so at a workshop, but it came down to having a scanner ready to use. Then again, there's the aforementioned need for those who are knowledgeable about what has already been archived from different sources and made available to the public. As many have mentioned, we hate to destroy printed archives in vain. It's obvious that we all agree for the need to keep this idea alive. I believe we have the hardware, software, and bioware resources already... we just need to get them all in the same room for a significant period of time. On Sat, May 14, 2022, 8:20 AM Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
The single biggest issue is resources. Get the money for a scanner? Need
the bodies to do the work. Get the bodies to do the work? Need the time from those bodies to do this massive undertaking. Get the time? Now you need to coordinate the time, place, bodies and material. Can’t have people just hanging out in the warehouse doing this. No bathroom facilities, gotta deal with food, no CO in the space so can’t have the public involved. Warehouse doesn’t have the room, electrical, cleanliness for this endeavor, so that means moving everything to a place that does.
CDL (and earlier OMARC) have offered to purchase or build a v book scanner so we don't have to de-bind a publication to conserve it. The current front-runner should we pull the trigger on this is the Image Access Bookeye 5 The two issues as I see them: * The lack of organic resources to support such a program. * The desire of InfoAge to put any electronic version produced by a program they control behind a paywall. Martin On 5/14/2022 8:19 AM, Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Dean, Doug, Dave and others have all made the points I was going to. This has been an issue as long as I have been involved with VCF and was an issue long before I arrived!
Like others, I have a hard time destroying a book or manual to preserve it. I understand the need but it is still counterintuitive to rip apart something you’re “saving!” :-)
The single biggest issue is resources. Get the money for a scanner? Need the bodies to do the work. Get the bodies to do the work? Need the time from those bodies to do this massive undertaking. Get the time? Now you need to coordinate the time, place, bodies and material. Can’t have people just hanging out in the warehouse doing this. No bathroom facilities, gotta deal with food, no CO in the space so can’t have the public involved. Warehouse doesn’t have the room, electrical, cleanliness for this endeavor, so that means moving everything to a place that does.
It all comes down to logistics. Jason Perkins k owe this better than any of us, and I’m sure he can speak far more eloquently than I can on this issue.
None of these things changes the need for this work to be done nor does it diminish the importance of the material and preserving it for the future. But that doesn’t mean VCF is in a position to do it, at least not at the moment. Perhaps getting the material to a person, persons or organization that can do it may be a better use of our limited resources.
Tony Bogan
Sent from my iPhone
On May 13, 2022, at 11:35 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic<vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 5/13/22 22:32, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Just a thank you for bringing it up. It may yields some new ideas or rethink. I'm one that values this old material and do lament the chopping up of the originals to get things scanned. Maybe magazines that would wear and fade but I've seen things destroyed that should not necessarily been done. Before I knew better, in the first year I was involved in VCF, I assisted in an effort to scan some remarkable Burroughs manuals- removing the pages from the most amazing bindings, which were trashed, and sending the beautiful pages to archive.org. Archive.org is awsome, and the material belongs there, but there had to be a better way for this particular set. Lets keep talking about these issues. The goals of preserving the content vs. preserving the book are usually at odds. It's not an easy judgment call to make. We have a large but dormant (due to lack of volunteers) scanning operation at LSSM. The best I've been able to come up with is that it's ok to destroy a book in order to preserve the content if other copies can be found. But that doesn't seem to make it any easier.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 5/14/22 09:24, Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
CDL (and earlier OMARC) have offered to purchase or build a v book scanner so we don't have to de-bind a publication to conserve it. The current front-runner should we pull the trigger on this is the Image Access Bookeye 5
The two issues as I see them:
* The lack of organic resources to support such a program.
If you mean people to do the work, yes, that's the tough part. LSSM has two high-speed duplex production scanners, all of the software set up with a PDF/A workflow, and several pallets containing thousands of pounds of documentation. But no one to run the scanners. It's extremely frustrating. Don't waste money on hardware (like we did) until you have *guaranteed* people to actually do something with it.
* The desire of InfoAge to put any electronic version produced by a program they control behind a paywall.
Yeah that's BS. They seem to be missing the point. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Don't waste money on hardware (like we did) until you have *guaranteed* people to actually do something with it.
A. Find out with local courts or police if you could get people assigned community service to do it. B. Put it next to your desk and chunk in paper stacks all during the day while working on other things.
On 5/14/22 09:41, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
Don't waste money on hardware (like we did) until you have *guaranteed* people to actually do something with it.
A. Find out with local courts or police if you could get people assigned community service to do it.
I'm not sure I'm up for that. In fact I'm 100% sure that I'm not.
B. Put it next to your desk and chunk in paper stacks all during the day while working on other things.
Thanks for the suggestion, but: - A lot of my work doesn't involve sitting at my desk. - Scanning 50-year-old paper in varying condition involves a lot more work than just dumping pages onto a scanner. - Production scanners are large and my lab is already full of things that actually need to be there. - I already work 12-16 hour days, seven days a week. Putting yet more shit on my shoulders because no one else will put down the game controller or the bong and do a little work isn't going to happen. So the stuff sits unscanned, just like a million other things sit undone. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Here's my take: while preserving the bindings, and physical materials would be excellent; the more pressing issue is to preserve the materials at all. If resources only allow for chopping the binding and doing a sheet fed scan, then that's what has to be done. It's Better to preserve and share the material electronically than have some incident ruin the paper and then it's gone forever. That said, after scanning if there was an organized way to keep the pages together, and if space allows, I'd absolutely keep the paper. -J On Sat, May 14, 2022 at 7:01 AM Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 5/14/22 09:41, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
Don't waste money on hardware (like we did) until you have *guaranteed* people to actually do something with it.
A. Find out with local courts or police if you could get people assigned community service to do it.
I'm not sure I'm up for that.
In fact I'm 100% sure that I'm not.
B. Put it next to your desk and chunk in paper stacks all during the day while working on other things.
Thanks for the suggestion, but:
- A lot of my work doesn't involve sitting at my desk. - Scanning 50-year-old paper in varying condition involves a lot more work than just dumping pages onto a scanner. - Production scanners are large and my lab is already full of things that actually need to be there. - I already work 12-16 hour days, seven days a week. Putting yet more shit on my shoulders because no one else will put down the game controller or the bong and do a little work isn't going to happen.
So the stuff sits unscanned, just like a million other things sit undone.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085 Sent from my iPhone
Perhaps we can do what Computer History Museum does. We can scan any resources we have on our own time and pace, but if someone in the public urgently needs a scan of something we have, they can contribute a nominal fee for the work, but we make the resulting scans available to the public. On Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:25 AM Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:.
* The desire of InfoAge to put any electronic version produced by a program they control behind a paywall.
an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media
A physical book will likely outlast any digitized version of it by hundreds of years. And don't underestimate the fact that whatever digital rendition of the book is created now, in 20-30 years it may have to get re-converted to whatever is current. I remember when .djvu files were considered the archive format of choice. Then PDF came out. There will be a time when even PDFs won't be readable anymore and hopefully someone will have converted the scans before that happens. I used to be involved in the digitization of wax (and amberol) cylinder phonograph records. The issue arose there too. Lossy? Not lossy? Ogg vorbis? Conversion to new media formats in the future? Etc. But books, if properly handled, can exist for centuries. 73 Eugene W2HX Subscribe to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/w2hx-channel/videos -----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> On Behalf Of Lou via vcf-midatlantic Sent: Friday, May 13, 2022 9:58 AM To: vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org Cc: Lou <despairempire@gmail.com> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] An idea for preservation and a proposal for the future of the VCF's library of written media. Hello all, I don't speak much on here often enough but I have been on the list and in the community for a little while now. Something came to mind the other night when I was doing research on preservation of physical book printed/written media and came to find not only several different kinds of methods and businesses that can scan these forms of media to a digital form but there are also scanners that exist which can do this job well without it being destructive to the books. The issue of course is that these scanners are by no means cheap for the average small scale user wanting to preserve a few of his books/manuals and some of the services out there that can offer this are either not much cheaper and/or only offer the destructive method of scanning this media (I.E. unbinding books to scan individual pages). After some time thinking about this, hearing some colleges and old libraries/research facilities having these for their own preservation efforts a thought came to mind...Why shouldn't the VCF have one for their own preservation efforts as well? The idea is simple enough, an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media, manuals, history, research, and more which can be put into digital form and be accessible to anyone who needs it without difficulty. It can help many countless individuals in the community who would need that information but isn't uploaded or documented anywhere else. A form of digital preservation and online library could be a great benefit to everyone. Finally, a further benefit is those who have their own materials they wish to preserve as well could do so with a suggested donation to the museum as well. It can be a service for other collectors who want to preserve their media as well and could even be added to the main library! Hosting of these materials could also be done and uploaded to archive.org to shoulder off the need of hosting our own site (unless desired of the community). It's a benefit with no real downside to the museum or the community at large. I know there will be some finer details to discuss and some minor issues that might come to light (especially anything involving possible copyright) but aside from this it can be a useful service for everyone. I just wanted to bring this idea forward to see what everyone thinks of it. Thanks for reading this out! -Lou
On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 5:59 PM W2HX via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
an investment in a non-destructive book scanner for the VCF which can be used to back up the existing library of physical written media
A physical book will likely outlast any digitized version of it by hundreds of years. And don't underestimate the fact that whatever digital rendition of the book is created now, in 20-30 years it may have to get re-converted to whatever is current. I remember when .djvu files were considered the archive format of choice. Then PDF came out. There will be a time when even PDFs won't be readable anymore and hopefully someone will have converted the scans before that happens.
I used to be involved in the digitization of wax (and amberol) cylinder phonograph records. The issue arose there too. Lossy? Not lossy? Ogg vorbis? Conversion to new media formats in the future? Etc.
But books, if properly handled, can exist for centuries.
I appreciate everyone, their opinions, comments and suggestions. This is a great and worthwhile discussion. As stated earlier the issues for VCF are: - Volunteers - We have them, but do they want to archive? - Volunteer Time - How much time can they give? - Scanning equipment - Minimal. We can always buy or borrow. - Space for the scanning equipment - Very little space. - Space to store the library in an HVAC environment. - We don't have this. Right now we have a small library that was consolidated, but it is not in an HVAC environment. We are working on getting a new warehouse space, and making it climate controlled. This will take time, money, and effort by volunteers and contractors, etc.
From my point of view VCF doesn't have all of the necessary resources to do an archiving activity on this scale. Like others have stated, this is best handed off to those who *do* have the resources. If we ever grow our organization to a higher level of resources, then this could be a viable thing that we could do.
========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> jeffrey@vcfed.org
participants (11)
-
Dave McGuire -
Dean Notarnicola -
Douglas Crawford -
Ethan O'Toole -
Jason Perkins -
Jeff S -
Jeffrey Brace -
Lou -
Martin Flynn -
Tony Bogan -
W2HX