Flatbeds VS Digital CopyStands

There has been a very interesting discussion on the Visual Resources Association (VRA) list serve comparing scanning stations that are flatbed scanners and those are copystands with a digital camera.  The digital copy stand seems to be the favorite among those with extensive workflows because of its consistency and speed.  However, when you are scanning printed material which has been printed using a dot pattern such as most books, brochures and programs, people seem to lean towards the flatbed.  The problem with dot patterns and half tones is moire patterning which is defined at wikipedia.org.as "moiré pattern (pronounced /mwaˈreɪ/ in English, [mwaʁe] in French) is an interference pattern created, for example, when two grids are overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes."  Thus, you have pixels and you have dots of ink, which results in moire or ripples across your scan.
Many find a flatbed scanner, which was described by a digital copyststand advocate as a digital camera with a very shallow depth of field, the preferred method with this type of material, because most scanning software have a  descreening function. For those curious, at this time the Epson 10000XL appears to be the flatbed of choice.
However, if you are using the copystand with digital camera set up, some "tricks" of the trade were shared.  The basic one appears to be to rotate the original material, shoot it and then straighten it in Photoshop. The rotation is minimum, about 8 degrees and should be done by trial and error as different printers have different dot patterns.
Another trick offered by the generous VRA listees was to correct  bleed-through from the backing page, by using a sheet of matte black paper can help prevent this, and sometimes help minimize background “checkerboard.”

My thanks to the VRA List, in particular: Rebecca A. Moss, Howard Brainen, Eileen Fry, Mark Olson, Chris Strasbaugh and Ross Wolcott.
For those looking for more information about scanning stations, you can look at Califa's Digital Information Forum   where I have placed several scanning articles and images of scanning stations.

“Born-Digital” and Born Again

I read a timely newspaper article on the plane to Atlanta recently to attend the Visual Resources Association annual conference: it mentioned the current exhibition at Emory University (in Atlanta) of an unusual “born-digital” archive of Salman Rushdie. It included four Apple computers (one ruined by a spilled Coke), which housed electronically produced book drafts, correspondence and editorial comments. This archive had presented the university archivists with the choice of simply saving the contents of the digital files, or of also preserving the organization and experience of using these early files. Emory opted for recreating the writing experience of Rushdie that gallery viewers can share in and play with. They can see the progress of written drafts and even make their own editorial comments (which takes a certain amount of chutzpah, considering that it is Rushdie!) “I know of no other place in the world that is providing access through emulation to a born-digital archives,” said Erika Farr, the director of born-digital initiatives at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory.

The unique way the Emory archivists approached the thorny issues of digital preservation nicely illuminates the remarks that Trudy made in her initial blog on “Digital Preservation and Digital Copies.” Trudy pointed out the differences in the value of digital access and digital preservation, and the costs and difficulties that attend to each. Hammering home the significance of digital preservation for me was a session late in the VRA conference titled “Embedded Metadata: share, deliver, preserve.” Digital preservation should not be overlooked in this spectrum when evaluating an archival collection, despite our apparent primary focus on digital access that the visual resources field seems to favor. Context can be as important as content in the visual world, although it is often harder to capture and replicate. The difficulties and expense of archiving generations of equipment, software and the web environment can be overwhelming, but it must be done in order to allow our increasingly rich “born-digital” culture to be captured for future research and enjoyment.