Vitus BÖSCH
(Qidenus Technologies, Vienna, Austria)
Introduction and Motivation: The large scale digitization of rare and old books has undergone a fast technical dynamic process in the last 5 years. For the first time, robotic scanners can speed up and make the book digitization procedure more economically viable, without endangering the precious materials.
Background: The convergence of the libraries role in the 21st century is a important factor in the increasing importance of making information distribution more efficient and faster. Today only about 3-5% of all printed books have been digitized – large libraries and archives, supported by supra-national efforts to build a European digital library, are racing to meet the today’s standards in book digitization technology. Up to now, most libraries have relied on manual book scanners to scan their repositories. This meant, that every page had to be turned by hand, making it a tedious and time consuming task.
However, integrating automatic book scanners means also to change certain ways of organizing the infrastructure within a library digitization department.
The case study of Saxon State- and University library will give an insight view of how a integration process for automatic book scanners can take place, – and how the subsequent use of automatic scanning equipment can help to reach the goals and expectations of this institution.
The last part will deal with the technical principals of automatic book scanners, trying to give an overview of different equipment and methods.