Guide to the Use of Scanning Station in the Visual Resources Collection in Fayerweather
There are two scanners hooked up to a computer in 215. There is a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 for use with slides & there is an Epson Expression 10000XL flatbed. Users should save digital files to their U drives. Use of the scanning station is for personal slides &/or photographs. We will have approximately 60,000 fully-licensed digital images from our collection available campus-wide on the Library’s new DigiTool software during 2008.
In order to use the station you’ll need some knowledge of PhotoShop & some familiarity with scanners. You’ll also need to contact us ahead of time to schedule the time(s) you want to use the scanning station.
Contact the IT Help Desk, at (413) 542-2526, for information on getting started with PhotoShop & PowerPoint. Also, check out the wide-ranging collections at www.artstor.org Their Offline Image Viewer (OIV) can be downloaded to your computer & is superior in many ways to PowerPoint as an image presentation tool whether you use their images or not. We hope to get the OIV downloaded to classroom computers. Links to other digital image sources available to Amherst College users can be found on the Digital Images page.
Hiring a student to do your scanning: The student will need to talk with us to get on the schedule & will need to use the scanning station when Jo-Anna &/or I are here. Students who fail to show up for their scheduled sessions or who abuse the scanning station will be removed from the schedule. There is no provision for unsupervised student use of the Collection & that includes the scanning station. Visual Resources is open from 8:30 to 12:00 & from 1:00 to 4:30, Monday through Friday. Don Milliken is here quite often during the lunch hour but that’s not guaranteed. Students may also use scanning equipment at the Computer Center in Seeley-Mudd.
Boston Photo www.bostonphoto.com provides digitizing services. So does Hunt’s Photo & Video, located in Hadley next to McDonald’s. Hunt’s sends your work out to a lab located elsewhere. I believe Ritz also offers digitizing services. I think the Ritz lab is in one of the upper midwest states. None of this is cheap, nor can it be done overnight, but you can get really great results if you explain how you’re going to use the digital images. My favorite digitizing service is PivotMedia in Florence. Contact Jim Gipe at 413.584.5302. Be sure to mention that you’re from Amherst College.