Klaus Graf wrote:
2009/8/29 Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb(a)yahoo.com>om>:
Rather than buy some digitization equipment
Wikimedia UK might be better off hiring an instructor for a workshop on making one of
these scanners. If you can find enough people interested in attending. Then everyone will
be scanning things that interest them personally and more likely to see the the projects
through.
Birgitte SB
I agree.
See also in German:
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Hilfe:Scannen_von_Büchern
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Etat (money from the German
chapter for digitization on demand in libraries)
Having read through the instructions for making these scanners, I'm sure
that many people would find their construction difficult without
instruction in person; the workshop would help. Whether having such a
personal scanner would result in more projects getting finished is a
marginal call. A lot of proposals are great ideas, but it's not until a
project is started that the contributor realizes that an overwhelming
amount of work is involved. A large number of volumes of /Popular
Science/ was recently imported; that would not have happened if the
individual had to scan all that material himself, even if he owned a
personal scanner. That said, it still remains that the most important
work that can be done in Wikisource does not happen until after the
scanning is done.
It would probably help to have an English version of the noted help page
in en:Wikisource.
I don't know that we are ready for subsidies yet, though in principle
there would be a definite place for them at some future time. It will be
up to the chapters to determine their own policies for what needs to be
done, and to make sure that their limited funds are spent in a cost
effective manner.
Ec