Message-Id: <mailto:199511062120.PAA24430@library.wustl.edu> Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 15:18:59 CST From: "Bruemmer, Bruce" <mailto:BRUCE@FS1.ITDEAN.UMN.EDU> Subject: Re: Justifying Hi-Res scans -Reply To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
Jon Reynolds said: > A tangent: given your stated basic needs, I am surprised you found it
> economical to outsource this project, given the price of student
> labor, H-P scanners, hard disks, and the need to trust someone on the
> outside.
A valid point, but in Minnesota our starting student office assistant work is on the order of $6.70 per hour (there's the price of Minnesota quality of life). I am also worried about image quality, which, if you get the wrong student, can be a real headache, especially if you have such interesting work as hearing a scanner hum back and forth 3000 times. I heard one story about someone who undertook a scanning project with student help, and he said you could tell which students did the scannning after a while.
How is scanning any different from outsourcing microfilm? We've had a wonderful camera here at the Univ. of Minnesota for years and it has gathered dust because the investment in getting a continous microfilm operation established is just too expensive to justify. The University of Minnesota has established a media lab with some of the right equipment, but they are looking for people to do glitzy things with multimedia, not production scanning. In fact, an art historian who wanted to cut a photographic catalog was discouraged because he would take too much of the scheduled time from the scanner.
But all of this is on the basis of an experiment, and I am trying to learn without bankrupting the University. I will be happy to share the cost analysis when I get the information. Has anyone out there analyzed the time necessary to retrieve, scan, process, and store using a modest flat bed scanner? We really need more inforamtion like that to make accurate comparisons. Bruce H. Bruemmer Archivist Charles Babbage Institute 103 Walter Library University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455
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