Ever made a bad copy on a copy machine? We have all been there as the copy may have smeared text, words cut off, thick black lines, and poor image quality. Because none of the books in the Southern History Department can be checked out, our patrons make a lot of copies as they conduct local history and genealogy research.
The Southern History Department applied for a major grant from the Alabama Public Library Service, which administers Alabama’s allocation of federal money received through the Library and Science and Technology Act. With the grant money, we purchased a KIC Click Mini overhead book scanner for the Southern History Department. Because of the overhead design, you can capture an image deeper within the folds of the book and the curvature of the spine of a tightly bound book. It also saves wear and tear on the binding of the books as you no longer have to flip the book over and flatten it to make a copy.
You will be able to scan in both color and black and white, print, save to a flash drive, or upload to cloud storage (Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, and Dropbox). It can save in the following file formats: PDF, JPEG, PNG, and Rich Text. Another great feature is that is has OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, which can made a PDF keyword searchable; you can also crop your images. Since saving to a flash drive is the most popular option, please bring a flash drive, or you can purchase one from the
Friends Bookstore. Saving a digital copy of your scan is free, and prints are $.15 per page.
Several of our loyal patrons have already tried it out and love it! Wanda Looney, a member of Birmingham African American Genealogy Group, has been scanning pages out of several local cemetery books to help her identify abandoned and overgrown cemeteries. She exclaimed, “I can be in the middle of a deserted cemetery overgrown by weeds, and can pull up the information I need from a cemetery book on my phone. It’s amazing!” We are excited about the overhead book scanner, and cannot wait for you to try it out!
Laura M. Gentry
Southern History Department
Central Library
Ever made a bad copy on a copy machine? We have all been there as the copy may have smeared text, words cut off, thick black lines, and poor image quality. Because none of the books in the Southern History Department can be checked out, our patrons make a lot of copies as they conduct local history and genealogy research.
You will be able to scan in both color and black and white, print, save to a flash drive, or upload to cloud storage (Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, and Dropbox). It can save in the following file formats: PDF, JPEG, PNG, and Rich Text. Another great feature is that is has OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, which can made a PDF keyword searchable; you can also crop your images. Since saving to a flash drive is the most popular option, please bring a flash drive, or you can purchase one from the Friends Bookstore. Saving a digital copy of your scan is free, and prints are $.15 per page.
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