You may have heard about the new book scanner purchased by the APRL, thanks to the generosity of the members of the Mighty Buck Club. Here’s an example of what the scanner can do.
We had to do a little rearranging in the library to make room for the new scanner. We moved our microfilm reader to a different spot in the library, and in doing so, a joint publication of the APRL and the National Archives and Records Administration came to my attention.
I had been looking for a small digitization project to show off our new scanner, and this publication seemed to fit our needs perfectly.
First, it is a publication of the APRL, and one of our top priorities for digitization is preserving and making available the history of the APS and APRL.
Second, it is a finding aid, which can be used by researchers to learn more about resources in our collections (in this case, the Stamp Bill Books which were microfilmed with funding from the APRL). If you don’t know about the Stamp Bill Books, read the pamphlet to learn more about this valuable resource!
Third, as a publication of the U.S. government, it is in the public domain and free from copyright restrictions.
Fourth, it is short (6 pages), not requiring extensive staff time or large amounts of storage space – perfect for a test. One of our APRL volunteers took a few minutes’ break from another project and scanned it for us.
To view the document, go to our Online Catalogue and search for “Stamp Bill Books” in the title field. You should see two records: one for the microfilm, and one for the book describing the microfilm. Click to view the full display for the book, and you will find a link to the digitized book. The PDF file is fully searchable, thanks to text recognition software built into our new scanner.
Watch for more from our new scanner – and remember that if you want to see what our new scanner can do for you, you can request scans of articles and book sections from the APRL.