On 9/23/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
Here's an idea. I presume the main problem with scanning them is their size (ie they won't fit on an ordinary scanner). Why not just scan them in sections and then use 'photo stitching' software (the kind that's designed to turn a collection of photos into a panorama) to turn the scanned sections into a single image?
It's time consuming and difficult. It is very easy to screw up in scanning something like this, so all of the parts will fit except for one (i.e. if something is not scanned at exactly the same elevation or gets skewed slightly in some other way).
It can be done. It's just not very easy. And it's certainly not fun. I wouldn't do it for free.
In the end I suspect that most digitization of such things will be done either by countries which will try to sell access to them (i.e. ProQuest) or as not-for-profit grants (i.e. a university deciding to put its PD library online, which looks good on a yearly report even if it doesn't create any revenue). This sort of dull work is not the sort of thing that too many volunteers would be interested in doing over time, IMO. (Maybe I'm wrong! Hopefully!)
FF