Fast scanning companies push documents through machines at high speed and tend to miss pages pasted together, torn or missing from the collection. That is what sets us apart. Each page scanned by Anderson Archival is provided by several trained archivists. Our team of professionals ensures that no pages have been skipped and that each scan meets our expectations and requirements as a living digital copy of the original. Depending on the fragility of your documents, you can use different types of scanners to protect documents. U-Bend scanners are the traditional choice for scanning documents that use a curve in the machine through which the paper passes. However, aged paper may have difficulty feeding through a curved path. In this situation, flatbed scanners are the ideal choice. This type of scanning feeds documents on a straight path when they are scanned, protecting fragile paper. Agencies will want to know everything they can know about their collections. How many objects and of what types: loose leaves, bound books, photos.
They also need to know how much they are willing to invest in this project, both in time and money, and decide whether to invest in new scanners or monitors or outsource part of the project. Gather all the documents you want to scan. In addition to important documents, you should also consider other documents you`ve stored over the years that you may want to share, such as old letters, certificates, diplomas, newspaper clippings, family photos, and other sentimental memories hidden in albums or boxes. (Note that while electronic copies of some documents may not be suitable for official use, you can use them yourself as a quick reference.) Preparing your documents for scanning is an essential part of successful overall scanning. Removing documents from storage containers or moving them to new ones, transportation and quality control are all part of the preparation process. When you work with MES to scan your documents, our experts will do the process for you. If our team encounters concerns about fragile documents, we will discuss them directly with you. The best way to accomplish this task is to convert all your paper documents into “electronic” digital copies that can be stored and accessed online. Physical documents can be easily scanned, giving you many advantages. Do you want to digitize your documents to present them and make them accessible to the world? If your historical records have been properly digitized, the possibilities of access and use go far beyond those that can enter your physical collection for research purposes. Are you ready to expand your audience while protecting and preserving original documents? Some document scanner apps can also take photos, which is handy if you`re trying to copy old pasted prints into old albums.
Or you can simply take a picture of the photo with your phone`s camera and use photo editing tools to enhance the image. One of the main reasons you should convert paper documents to electronic files is to save time in the long run. People waste hours searching physical documents for the information they need. When you scan documents, finding information becomes much faster and easier, saving valuable time and effort. In addition, digital documents can be easily shared and accessed on a much larger scale. I hope you never have to call your digital archive for serious situations. But if you plan ahead, when you have the luxury of time, you can make sure copies of your documents are there when you need them. Once you`ve set it up, open the scan cover on the top of the printer and place your original document or photo face down on the glass. Close the lid and select Scan on the printer or computer screen to create the digital file. A good candidate for digitization is a collection of historical books or magazines that must be searchable. Once digitized, these books become fully searchable and you can find and reference documents much more easily. See for yourself how you can easily save old documents, even if they were barely readable at first.
Download Zoner Photo Studio X, try it for free for 30 days and tell us how well your restoration work is going! Do you want to preserve your historical records forever? Once your project is complete, you will have a beautiful digital library at your fingertips. Do you want to scan your documents so that they can be used for research purposes? You can query the entire OCR text, accurately search for sentences and metadata, enlarge images, and print documents. As paper can be extremely fragile, the handling of books and historical documents should be approached with caution. Minimal handling ensures a longer lifespan of a document and adds another advantage to scanning. The preservation of historical records is not complete until you have a way to view your documents. Metadata is the information the computer uses to organize your files, which helps you quickly and easily search between documents. For example, once metadata has been inserted into digital documents, you can search for any part of the document, whether it`s text on the page or an author, date, or more general topic that multiple documents would be associated with. Collection owners must then make a decision. Do you want the scans to go through our cleaning process or present the images as they are? If a cleaning is desired, each side is carefully studied by human eyes from top to bottom – from sign to sign if your specifications require it. Once the deficiencies are documented, our team has several recovery options.
The process of digitizing historical documents begins with a careful scanning of every page of the document. Resolution, lighting and accuracy are important factors for this step. Large format objects such as maps and legal documents are placed on special flatbed scanners. After scanning, the images are carefully checked and quality is ensured. If you want to keep documents online using Dropbox or a similar service, encrypt them before uploading them. You can also store your files on an encrypted flash drive in a safe place. Wirecutter has a guide on how to lock down your hardware, including encrypting a computer`s hard drive. Anderson Archival also offers assistance in creating a website or digital catalog so you can fully showcase and share your library. We work with you to create a website that you love and that displays your documents beautifully.
If you don`t have a scanner, your smartphone can fill up. Just browse your app store and download a mobile scanning app. These apps use your phone`s camera to take a picture of the page. This image will be saved as a PDF or JPG file on your phone or on an online storage page. First, read the app`s privacy policy so you know where your data is stored and managed by the company. While World Backup Day is usually celebrated by hard drive manufacturers and data storage services this week, it aims to remind people to back up their computers. But even if you`re already backing up your digital files, do you have a backup plan for your unique documents and photos that you only have on paper, like birth certificates, marriage certificates, and military release papers? I go to color controls, where I slightly reduce saturation and dynamism. Under Color Shift, I switch to the Saturation tab and dim the orange, because that`s the color that was highlighted the most.