New subject: Digitisation equipment

27 Aug 2009

Yes, I take your point. However, much of the scanned material is subject to copyright, and
the people who've invested in the scanning are often keen to get a return on their
investment and not release it to us! The concept we were thinking about is linking with
municipal archives, saying - we'll scan your records for you if you release them to us
copyright-free afterwards. Not sure if it's a runner at the moment, which is why
I'm asking the question to see what others have done. 

Could you tell me more about the "transcription" tasks? Have we got access to
any resources that are awaiting transcription? 

Thanks 

----- "John Vandenberg" &lt;jayvdb(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 
...
  From: "John Vandenberg"
&lt;jayvdb(a)gmail.com&gt; 
 To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" &lt;commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; 
 Sent: Thursday, 27 August, 2009 03:46:58 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal 
 Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Digitisation equipment 

 On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Andrew 
 Turvey&lt;andrewrturvey(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote: 
  We had a discussion at a recent Wikimedia UK
board meeting about potentially 
 buying some digitisation equipment which could be used to generate content 
 for the Wikimedia projects. This recent email to the EN-WP list sparked my 
 interest. 

 Does anyone have any experience with equipment like this, and could you 
 recommend anything? Any idea what the price range and quality typically is? 

 Also, is anyone else in the Wikimedia community currently doing this?   
 This came up on the Australian Wikimedia list. 

 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-August/002606.html 

 I think it is terribly inefficient for Wikimedians to start mass 
 scanning projects while we have so few people engaging in 
 transcription projects. Libraries have scanned millions of books, and 
 there is no signs that they are going to stop. Commons and Wikisource 
 should be mining and transcribing these books which are already 
 scanned. 

 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-August/002611.html 

 -- 
 John Vandenberg 

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