22 Nov
2006
22 Nov
'06
12:11 p.m.
Gooijen, Henk wrote:
Scanning the document is most of the work in wall-time
clock seconds.
My scans are at 600 dpi, 8-bit grey scale, and thus the "PDF" files are
huge (actually they are TIFF with a PDF "jacket" to make them easy to read).
I transfer them to Al, and Al does post-processing, squeezing them down
to approx 30-40% of the original size. See for example the XXDP listings.
I scanned all of those. You don't want to know the original file size!
The question does keep on sticking in my mind though of whether anyone's
worrying about scanning rarer documents at a sufficient quality / resolution
to be as close as possible to the original.
For some documents there are very few surviving copies, and it would seem
sensible to preserve those ones now in a form that was as close as reasonably
possible to the original - colour scans where colour exists in the document
(or the paper is non-white or the text non-black I suppose), greyscale for
text rather than bi-level, sufficient resolution for photos and diagrams etc.
A reasonable scanner will give results that are always
better for somebody
else who does not have the document. Any documentation, regardless the
quality is better than no documentation at all!
Oh, absolutely. Getting the raw information saved is definitely a priority -
but with storage costs getting cheaper all the time, maybe we're at a point
where a coordinated effort could be made to preserve the really rare items in
a form a little closer to the original?
cheers
Jules