Message-Id: <mailto:199510141510.KAA14708@library.wustl.edu> Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 16:10:29 +0100 From: Peter Kidd <mailto:pkidd@SAS.AC.UK> Subject: Re: scanning old photos -harmful? To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
Dear Andy,You will need an answer from someone with hard facts, but until you get those, consider that 1) if scanning the old photos can reduce the amount of handling necessary in future, this can only be beneficial to their preservation, and 2) if you wanted to make copies of your photos by conventional photography you would presumably use a light source far more powerful than the flatbed scanner's.
Related to the first point above, but just out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone has experience of scanning projects which have had the opposite effect. In other words, by bringing visual material to a wider public through the use of scanning, an increased demand to see the original has been created, thus exacerbating, rather than solving, conservation problems. This is what happens with medieval manuscripts: facsimiles are supposed to allow a wider audience to study the book without having to consult the original, but invariably this wider audience is prompted into lines of enquiry which require consultation of the original. The result is that either the manuscript suffers an increase in handling, or the librarian/curator has to enforce sticter rules about access to the original.
Peter Kidd