Erica mentions something that has always sort of bugged me about scanned books, keyword searchable or no: bitonal image scanning. I use Heritage Quest at my library to do genealogical research. They have about 25,000 history and family name books scanned and searchable online. It’s sort of amazing except that the thing I really like to look at old books for — the fancy pictures and odd typography and illustrations — are almost unreadable. At some point, someone made a decision to do this, and I think it was the wrong decision. If we’re saving shelves and shelves of storage space and preservation costs, and I’m not so sure we are, couldn’t we spend a few cents extra to get at least grayscale renditions of the images in these books?
Tag: books
is how we read changing?
Will the Internet kill the printed book?
Books remain “the best interface for text yet invented. Some of their comparative advantages include: their lightweight, portability, high contrast and relative cheapness. In short, they are far more efficient than the scrolls and oral lore they replacedâ€.
hi – 28mar
Hi. I went to the courthouse today to contest a traffic ticket and my bag was searched. The police officer who went through my bag pulled out one of the DVDs I was returning to the library and eyeballed it “Hijacking Catatrophe, huh?” I told him, truthfully, that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to see it yet but it was due at the library. He put it back, and I went inside. These non-events happen more times than people realize, let’s try to keep that in mind when routine checks do sometimes go sour.
other sorts of library dust
While I was looking up the URL for Library Dust I happened to also co-Google this neat page about Modern Library dust jackets.
book arts
Fore-edge painted books, links galore. How can you look these up in an OPAC?