1930 Monkey Wards Catalogue

[1930artdeco]

Hi All,

I would like to start a project that involves my 1930 Montgomery Wards Catalogue. I would like to photograph each page as a scan would destroy the book and upload them to the net. Question, what is the best way to do this? I have a photobucket acct., I know it will be huge file as it has about 400 pages with lots of a really cool stuff. Recommendations?

Mike

 

[F. J.]

Hold on, you might not have to ruin it!

Hi All,

I would like to start a project that involves my 1930 Montgomery Wards Catalogue. I would like to photograph each page as a scan would destroy the book and upload them to the net. Question, what is the best way to do this? I have a photobucket acct., I know it will be huge file as it has about 400 pages with lots of a really cool stuff. Recommendations?

Mike

I don’t know if destroying the binding is completely necessary. There are methods employed by museums photographing collections of centuries-old manuscripts that do not involve harming the subject. The pages are not scanned per se, but are rather placed with the book open on the table with one side supported in the air and photographed from directly above. The reason that the book is not placed flat is because doing so may damage the spine.

After a quick search I found the following video about cataloguing museum items. Their method is slightly different, but I think you’ll get the idea:
[video=youtube;oUgG7HEpvyo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUgG7HEpvyo[/video]
(Books are found toward the end. If you are quite impatient, it’s at about six minutes, five seconds.)

Also, have you looked at the Internet Archive as a possible depository? I think it would be more accessible than Photobucket, especially if you combined all the images into a single .PDF file.