Last week, Special Collections was delighted to receive the newest member of our team--the latest walkup model of the Bookeye, an amazing overhead image scanner. With the Bookeye, patrons in our Reading Room will be able to easily digitize images from items in our collections, then email these images to a valid email address, or save the images to a USB drive (a jump drive/flash drive/thumb drive).Images can be created at low (100dpi), medium (300 dpi), or high (400 dpi) resolution. (600 dpi scans may soon be available on the Bookeye, but are still available for order in Special Collections). After scanning, images can be easily manipulated in the Edit feature. Here, you can zoom in to a high level of page detail, and crop the image to include just the portion you wish. Images can be scanned as jpeg, rtf, png, or pdf files, and you can even make searchable pdfs right from the machine--an incredible option when scanning a large body of material or when completing research on limited time. Most amazingly, files can be saved as auto-read mp3s for visually disabled patrons.
The Bookeye has a extremely user-friendly touch-screen interface, and though Special Collections staff will always be on hand to walk you through the process, it's easy to get comfortable with the scanner right away. Perhaps the best part about the Bookeye is that all scanning is free. Print copies of digital files will still be available at $.10 each. Special Collections staff will evaluate each item you'd like to copy for copyright and fragility reasons, but most items from the collections will be possible to scan. We'll also help you set up bound items in the cradle for the best possible binding support.Come by Special Collections and try out the Bookeye!
