Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Scanning Away

Today I had the chance to visit the Internet Archive's scanning station at the Boston Public Library, where they're scanning the John Adams Library (among a great number of other things, including books scanned-on-demand!). It's quite a cool setup, a big dark room with ten separate scanning stations (most of which were running while I was there). They run two shifts a day, and while I was there a wide range of items were being digitized (including one of the Adams books, a volume of Don Quixote).

I can't remember if I've written about it or not, but I'm absolutely thrilled with the quality of the Internet Archive's scans, and much prefer them to Google's. I think it's great that they're making inroads in the Boston area, and I hope they'll keep up the great work.