GUIDELINES FOR DONATING BOOKS

 

First, we are thrilled when someone has an antique needlework pattern and wants to make a scan for the library!

 

Here are some guidelines:

 

1.  Has your book or booklet or magazine already been scanned?

     Check the catalog to see if your book, booklet, magazine or article has already been scanned by someone else.  Also check our work-in-process – this is a very rough list of books that have been scanned but not yet photo edited or otherwise processed for upload.

 

2.  Is your book in the public domain?

     Check the copyright information of your book.  This information is usually on the title page or on the inside of the cover.  If your book was published in the United States before 1923, then it is in the public domain and we can use it.  If your book was published in another country, or is a U.S. publication after 1922, or does not have a copyright date, please check the guidelines here:  public domain guidelines

     U.K. and European publications, in general, go into the public domain 70 years after the death of the author.  For books that do not list a date, or don't list an author or editor, we research and estimate the best we can.  Be sure to make a memo of how you determined the approximate age of your book - the name of the publisher or printer, threads and hooks mentioned, ads in the book, clothing styles, revenue stamps and typefaces, and author biographies are all things we have researched for the undated books in the library

     If your book was published in the U.S. after 1922 and before 1964, it may be in the public domain, if the original publisher did not renew the copyright at the Library of Congress 28 years after the publication date.  If you can document your research that your book was not renewed, we can put the book in the library.  Other volunteers may be working on this project – if you check the links at the www.antiquepatternlibrary.org, we might have some lists of book titles up.

**If your book is not in the public domain, then it is illegal to make copies of it, and we can’t use it for the library.**

 

3.  Scanning books is a lot of work!  So that we don’t duplicate work and waste effort:

     If you have issues of Needlecraft (Augusta, Maine) magazine, please contact Adrienne Kattke -  lacekat (at) hotmail.com.  Several people are scanning Needlecraft issues and it’s a tricky process with the big pages and tiny print.  But worth it.

     If you have any of the wonderful books by Flora Klickmann that haven’t been uploaded to the library yet, please contact Helen -  cwmenfys (at) gmail.com , to coordinate.

     If you want to work on typing or editing text (so that we can make more efficient html files of some of the books) please contact Sonja Henderson heysonja (at) gmail.com, who is organizing the image-to-text project.

     If you have another book, booklet, or magazine that you would like to scan for the library, please contact Judith Combs -  nornsneedlework (at) gmail.com

**If you donate a book scan, we will list your name as the donor at the Antique Pattern Library website in the book list entry, on the donor’s list (with the URL to your website, too, if you want), and on the cover page for each book.**

 

NOTES ON SCANNING:

     In many countries, the act of making a scan creates a new work with its own rights.  We are using the licensing language provided by Creative Commons to try to keep the scans free for everyone.  We also do what we can to keep our scans from being “lifted” and copies sold at the online bookstores or eBay.

     Scanners and other computer equipment vary a lot, as do our skill levels.  Old books tend to scan as faded text on yellowish brown background, with foxing, creases, and other damage.  Right now most of the books are scanned at 300 dpi in full color, then the pages are cleaned up in PhotoShop and usually converted to grayscale.  Sometimes we can then reduce the pages to 150 dpi, and/or process with OCR (optical character recognition) software.  The pages are then assembled into pdf files with a cover page, footnotes, watermarks and security.

     Scans are not usable unless they can be printed legibly enough for a needle worker to use.  That means (after one of us is done editing) black text on white background with illustrations as clear as the originals, if possible.  In many old pattern books the illustrations are more important than the instructions, and some of the old books have almost no text at all.

     Right now the best ways are to scan the pages of the books into tif, png, or jpg format in full color at 300 dpi, or use OCR software to convert the images of the letters to text characters:

JPG files are reasonably good for either photo editing or OCR scanning later on, and compress well enough to email.  They are “lossy”, which means they lose a little resolution every time they are saved, and the resolution is fuzzier when they are converted to PDF format.

TIF files keep their resolution and can be read by OCR software, but are usually too big to email, so must be sent via FTP uploads, or snail mail.

PNG files keep their resolution the best after conversion to PDF format, and are small enough to email, but don’t read in OCR software.  They are the best choice for filet, cross-stitch, and beading charts.

OCR scans (usually converted to DOC files) need editing to retype mis-read characters, but the text stays crisp throughout the pdf conversion process, and the file size is much smaller.  The book illustrations usually still need to be cleaned up in a photo editor.  Some old typefaces can’t be read at all by OCR software.

 

Tips for Better OCR Results

     When using OCR software, recognition quality depends greatly on the quality of the scanned image.  The image quality may be improved by altering the main scanning parameters: resolution, scan mode and brightness.

     Resolution. Use 300 dpi for regular text (font size 10 pts. or greater) and 400-600 dpi for text in smaller font sizes (9 pts. or smaller).

     Scan mode: Scanning documents in the grayscale mode produces the best text recognition accuracy, as brightness is usually adjusted automatically.  If you wish to retain color in the images, text or backgrounds of your electronic documents, use the color scanning mode.  A medium brightness value of around 50% should be good enough in most cases.

 

          Some of the pdf files in the library were assembled with pages made from several methods - for example, TIF for pages with some text and several illustrations, PNG for filet charts, OCR for pages with no illustrations.  We’re flexible.  If you can make a legible scan, one of us will find a way of making a downloadable book from it.

    

      Scanning and cleaning up images of old and damaged pages can be time consuming!  And addictive.  Some of the books we put up in the beginning are awful copies, but we're gradually rescanning and photo editing those, and the newer files are better.  We're saving and storing the raw and edited scans - as our skills and software improve over time, we'll revisit some issues.

 

 

jcombs last updated 17Aug2008