While you might think of document and book scanning as a simple process that can’t really go wrong, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Book scanning is a complex process, even more so than with single-sheet documents, because they’re bound. There are, however, certain services that specialise in book scanning, possessing both the technical expertise and equipment to carry out the process in an effective manner. There are certain things to look for with book scanning services, which we’ll explore below.
Appropriate equipment
One of the most important things to look for when selecting a book scanning service is to make sure that they’re using the right equipment.
When it comes to scanning books, some people say that the only appropriate tool is a planetary book scanner. With this piece of technology, you only have to move the pages when you’re flipping through the book, with the book itself staying still.
This is especially useful if you’re scanning old, delicate, or valuable books, as you can be extra careful during the scanning process.
If you need to scan a large selection of books, an automatic book scanner might be the most appropriate option. Keep in mind though that with automatic book scanners, the risk of damage occurring to your book increases.
As a result, it’s more suitable for scanning large amounts of standard books, rather than more expensive or delicate books.
High-quality images
While old-school scanners used to produce digital copies that were quite low quality, often hard to interpret and highly grainy, luckily those days are long behind us. The standard nowadays is extremely high, and if you’re using the services of a professional book scanner, your expectations should be equally high.
The service that you use should make sure that extra care is taken to ensure every page is scanned as well as possible.
After, each image should be improved and enhanced to make the scan as close as possible to that of the page it was taken from. Finally, colour accuracy should be maintained to a high level.
Make sure that the service you use frequently calibrates the colour accuracy on their equipment – at least once a month.
Good reviews
At the end of the day, the best way of ensuring that the service you use will provide you with high-quality results is by looking at testimonials and reviews on their website and google business page.
A book scanning service could have excellent machinery, but if the people working at that business were unskilled or lacked proper training, they could still damage books in the scanning process and end up providing an unsatisfactory result.
Make sure that the service you go with has excellent reviews, especially if you’re getting a lot of books scanned or if the books being scanned are particularly valuable.
