[Commons-l] Digitisation equipment

[Andrew Turvey]

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" <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote: 
> From: "John Vandenberg" <jayvdb at gmail.com> 
> To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
> 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<andrewrturvey at googlemail.com> 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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