My New Toy… uh, Tool!

On a fairly frequent basis I am asked to find a journal or book and scan a few pages of it for someone. While this at first read, sounds like a simple task, it’s fairly time consuming. Here’s the process:

1. Leave my office.
2. Go downstairs either to the Krause room, or to the Stacks.
3. For the Stacks, up four flights of stairs to find the book.
4. Back down four flights of stairs, across to “our side” of the building and then up a flight of stairs to my office.
5. Scan the book.
6. Repeat steps one, two, three and four.

I heard about a literal magic wand, and after some research, purchased one for the office. It’s actually a portable wand scanner! I just got it and it’s amazing. It can scan a page at either 300, 600 or 1200 dpi, and it’s portable, and has WiFi. When I have to go to the Stacks, I just take it along with me, scan the pages of the book that I need and voila! I am finished. I come back to the office, download the files and send them off.

One of the first things I scanned was a page from the Chronicles of Baltimore mentioning my multiple greats-grandmother, Ellen North Moale.

And then I got to work scanning in a series of articles from an old issue of the Maryland Medical Journal for a member. I can scan the pages either as a JPG or a PDF.

Just for fun, we tried scanning one of our paintings and were amazed at the detail which came out at just 300 dpi resolution! You can see every brush stroke.

I am thrilled at how much easier my magic wand is going to make my searches!