On 15 February 2014 20:24, Michael Peel <michael.peel(a)manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
Perhaps it would be worth WMUK thinking about
purchasing such equipment, either to be made available in the office (which would then
require travel costs, or postal costs and volunteer time in the office to scan posted
material in), or to be sent around to interested volunteers?
Of course, both purchase and maintenance costs should be thought about here, both for the
machine itself and for the equipment that’s needed to interface with it, and also
insurance costs... Depending on demand and durability, that may or may not make this
cost-effective.
Or maybe there are renting-on-demand options available for equivalent, more recent,
equipment that can do the job?
(It’s not a white elephant so long as the up-front costs turn out to be worthwhile, given
that it shouldn't cost much to recycle it if it breaks…)
Hmm. Do we have any vague ideas on numbers?
* How often do we get a reasonable chance at a cache of unscanned negatives?
* How many smaller museums or archives would have unscanned film to
offer in such a case?
* How many people with private collections of negatives that they've
never gotten around to scanning (e.g., me) would suddenly have a huge
pile of stuff to donate to Commons just given the opportunity?
- d.