Message-Id: <mailto:199510161555.KAA15005@library.wustl.edu> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 10:51:07 -0500 From: Alan Newman <mailto:anewman@ARTIC.EDU> Subject: Re: scanning old photos -harmful? To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
At 4:10 PM 10/14/95, Peter Kidd wrote: >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
Dear Peter etal,
We have routinely scanned glass negatives for years and have thus limited their handling and have used the digital files in publications and multimedia projects. It is perfectly safe to scan glass negatives with the emulsion up, nothing is touching them and actually safer than contact printing. If you make duplicate negatives or copy prints you will generally have inferior results than a good flatbed scan of an original negative.
Thanks, Alan
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Alan Newman, Executive Director tel. 312 443-7247 Imaging & Technical Services fax. 312 443-0849 The Art Institute of Chicago Internet: mailto:anewman@artic.edu 111 S. Michigan Ave. Applelink: ARTINST Chicago IL 60603 America Online: ARTINST