IT and Libraries: State-of-the-art scanner helps historians in Samara Oblast

Digitization of local history materials is in full swing in Samara Oblast. The other day the librarians, who used to digitize paperback materials manually, received a long-awaited reinforcement. The administration of the region has purchased an auto-scanning equipment, which makes copies of rare books, turns over the pages, saves, and works 24/7.

The administration has appropriated 4.5 million rubles to purchase ELARobot (ELectronic ARchive) in its effort to advance the regional electronic government project. However such an allocation can save the staff members of Samara Regional Universal Scientific Library from hours of monotonous work as they digitize local history materials. It means that from now on every day the advanced readers will have a chance to get access to ever-growing e-collection of rare books and documents.

The state-of-the-art software can scan books at a speed up to 2.5 thousand pages per hour (or 1 page per 1.5 sec.). However much depends on the book format, page length and the state of the folios.

By comparison, library’s member of the staff used to spend three days to digitize a 625-page book. Now the equipment copes with the same task in 40 minutes. At first, specialist spends a few minutes to adjust the equipment, and then the machine begins to turn the pages all by itself, sending page after page to the computer’s memory.

To turn the pages and make their copies the unit uses air flow, which presses pages tightly to scanning sensor. In a twinkling, on the monitor appear scanned book pages, which, as the digitization process moves on, grow into the e-book. The librarians admit that the introduction of the new wonder-scanner has significantly reduced the number of human errors. In addition, the software can automatically convert the text of scanned books into text format, what makes it easier for users to search by keyword.