[vcf-midatlantic] Items available

[Ethan O'Toole]

> I had thought about investing in one of those ~$500 desktop book scanners
> for myself. I have collections of home computer club newsletters that I'd
> like to scan into structured PDF files... and maybe offer to do small
> batches of material from places like your museum and VCF on occasion.

My friend let me borrow his Brother, I think it was a 2280. Another friend 
here from our group gave me two Epsons, I need to repair them. Maybe I 
bring one to SS workshop tomorrow and replace USB port.

I cut all the bindings off the magazines with a chopper. While it's fun to 
think of some exotic double camera setup with vacuum assisted page turners 
and how much the magazines were worth on the market. But at the end of the 
day it comes down to time. Chop the bindings, into the scanner, then post 
processing for the OCR for the PDFs.

It did pretty well. And I was able to do other things while it was going 
on so I could optimize my time. Black and white screams on the Brother.

The trick to this for me was doing the work at home (the probably 
recycling all the paper.) It's more efficient to roll by and dump 100 
pages into the machine in between life tasks.

Multipage diagrams and stuff are a pain and of course require different 
techniques (camera or blueprint scanner) but usually the bulk of stuff is 
normal sized.

        - Ethan