Fwd: [Wikimediauk-l] WMUK slide scanner - Wikimedia-l

15 Feb 2014

A message I just sent in a wikimediauk-l thread about photographic
negative scanners, which I thought might be of general interest to
Wikimedia organisations.

tl;dr: an archival-quality negative scanner has potential to be a
white elephant* (a donation that is actually a liability), but could
be a useful thing that an organisation could use to make very good
friends with GLAMs and individuals.

- d.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt;
Date: 15 February 2014 20:00
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] WMUK slide scanner
To: UK Wikimedia mailing list &lt;wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;

On 15 February 2014 19:52, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
...
  On 15 February 2014 15:23, David Gerard
&lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> On 15 February 2014 15:09, Andy Mabbett &lt;andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk&gt; wrote:

...
 > > Change of plan: Thank you, but I've been
offered the use of one of
> > these:
> >   http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/scanner/scoolscan_4000/
> > by a friend who lives locally. 
...
 > Oooooooooooooh you lucky bugger. That's the
level of archival-quality
> piece of kit we could do with for WMUK. Though it would have to live
> in the office. 
...
  A nikon product at the WMUK office? Is that wise:
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canon_EOS_DSLR_family_(selection).j… 

:-)

Seriously, though: if you want archival quality, the way to go is a
CoolScan. Not only would we be able to scan negatives ourselves
(though it'd be tied to the office, rather than being a loanable
item), we'd be able to make very good friends indeed with GLAMs that
have random piles of unscanned negatives.

It'd be nice if someone with a few hundred quid bought a CoolScan,
scanned their collection, then donated the kit to WMUK when done with
it.

The way it usually goes is: someone buys a CoolScan on eBay, scans
their negative collection, sells it to the next person. WMUK would be
a suitable end point for such a chain.

The main catch is for it to be *someone else's* problem to make sure a
decade-old piece of kit is in usable condition not to be a white
elephant - donating something that turns into a liability is helpy
rather than helpful. CoolScan IV/4000 use FireWire, V/5000 on use USB
... software and supported OS is an interesting question as well ...
III/3000 and earlier do archival-quality scanning, but often have
weird hardware requirements. I think the I and II needed their own ISA
card. This is the sort of white elephant *not* to inflict on a small
charity.

If I had ~£500 to spare I would happily be that person. I'm not though :-)

I'll borrow the Ion (a rather less fragile piece of kit, so
borrowable), but if I had access to a CoolScan I'd happily do 'em
again.

- d.