A message I just sent in a wikimediauk-l thread about photographic negative scanners, which I thought might be of general interest to Wikimedia organisations.
tl;dr: an archival-quality negative scanner has potential to be a white elephant* (a donation that is actually a liability), but could be a useful thing that an organisation could use to make very good friends with GLAMs and individuals. - d. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> Date: 15 February 2014 20:00 Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] WMUK slide scanner To: UK Wikimedia mailing list <wikimediau...@lists.wikimedia.org> On 15 February 2014 19:52, geni <geni...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 15 February 2014 15:23, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 15 February 2014 15:09, Andy Mabbett <a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote: >> > Change of plan: Thank you, but I've been offered the use of one of >> > these: >> > http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/scanner/scoolscan_4000/ >> > by a friend who lives locally. >> Oooooooooooooh you lucky bugger. That's the level of archival-quality >> piece of kit we could do with for WMUK. Though it would have to live >> in the office. > A nikon product at the WMUK office? Is that wise: > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canon_EOS_DSLR_family_(selection).jpg :-) Seriously, though: if you want archival quality, the way to go is a CoolScan. Not only would we be able to scan negatives ourselves (though it'd be tied to the office, rather than being a loanable item), we'd be able to make very good friends indeed with GLAMs that have random piles of unscanned negatives. It'd be nice if someone with a few hundred quid bought a CoolScan, scanned their collection, then donated the kit to WMUK when done with it. The way it usually goes is: someone buys a CoolScan on eBay, scans their negative collection, sells it to the next person. WMUK would be a suitable end point for such a chain. The main catch is for it to be *someone else's* problem to make sure a decade-old piece of kit is in usable condition not to be a white elephant - donating something that turns into a liability is helpy rather than helpful. CoolScan IV/4000 use FireWire, V/5000 on use USB ... software and supported OS is an interesting question as well ... III/3000 and earlier do archival-quality scanning, but often have weird hardware requirements. I think the I and II needed their own ISA card. This is the sort of white elephant *not* to inflict on a small charity. If I had ~£500 to spare I would happily be that person. I'm not though :-) I'll borrow the Ion (a rather less fragile piece of kit, so borrowable), but if I had access to a CoolScan I'd happily do 'em again. - d. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
