LIB 121: Week 6-7 (October 8, 2013)

Due to mandatory professional development for the instructors at PCC, last week’s class was canceled. I went in this week to learn more information about scanner specifications and scanning procedures than I had ever hoped to grasp before. I recently purchased an inexpensive printer/scanner, and now I can read the specifications and see what my $50.00 scanner is worth. It turns out that my scanner could not produce archival quality scans, because the maximum scan resolution is only 2400 dpi. For spatial definition, I learned that we should strive for 4,000 dpi on the long side of the image for archival quality. For example, an 8”x10”, needs to be scanned at 400 dpi in order to achieve a decent resolution. All of the information that is included in a scanner’s specifications is still a little confusing to me, especially since the different aspects are measured in the same units. After we discussed specifications, we spent the second half of class scanning images at the appropriate resolution for their size, the bit depth for their color, and saving them as TIFF and JPEG files. Once again something that is very simple, which I have been doing haphazardly for years has the potential to be a much more clear and streamlined process.