IDEAL / Contex COPYmate Scanner Helps Preserve Celina, Texas Heritage
Background
Celina, Texas (population 3,100), was originally established in 1876. Celina has a rich and colorful history and is currently participating in the Texas Historical Commission "Visionaries in Preservation" program, working on establishing historic districts, with restoration and reuse of historic structures. One historic downtown building, a former newspaper office, still housing its original printing press, has been restored by the Celina Area Heritage Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Main Street Program, and the City. It now serves as a welcome center, a local history museum, and offices for the participating groups.
The Problem
As with many small towns, the newspaper that was originally published in the restored newspaper office provided a record of life in this small Texas town.As part of its preservation effort, the Celina Area Heritage Association wanted to preserve the newspapers and make them available for historical and genealogic research. The challenge was that some of the newspapers date back as far as the early 1900's, and have begun to deteriorate.Many of them fall apart when lifted from the boxes in which they are stored.
The 12 volunteer directors of the Celina Area Heritage Association decided that the only way to preserve the newspapers and make them available for research was to scan and OCR them and put them online. The challenge was to find a scanner and a scanning method that would enable them to do transform these delicate originals into digital files.
The Solution
Bob McKnight, Officer and Director of the Celina Area Heritage Association talked with Scott Shuppert of CAD/CAM Services, Inc., an IDEAL / Contex dealer, and Scott recommended the IDEAL / Contex COPYmate scanner and WideImage operating software. This flatbed scanner with an 18" x 24" scan area, fast scanning speed and easy operation has made the scanning project a success.The clean-up features in WideImage enable them to clean up the files for easy OCR'ing. Some of the newspapers can be laid directly on the scanning surface without further deterioration of the originals; however, many of the documents being scanned are so brittle that they are inserted between two sheets of plexiglass in order to keep them from falling apart as they are laid on the scanning surface.
"Many of the edges of the newspapers are laying in chunks in the storage boxes and cannot be held directly by hand," says McKnight. "If it weren’t for the COPYmate and the ease with which we are able to scan, even when the newspapers are sandwiched in plexiglass, we would be at risk of losing the valuable history that our old newspapers provide.The project has gone so smoothly that we're also considering producing a database of marriage and obituary data from the information that we've scanned."
Conclusion
"There is no other scanner I know of that could do this project," says Scott Shuppert.
The IDEAL / CONTEX COPYmate 18 flatbed scanner combines a clamshell design with 48-bit color capture, high-speed color and black and white scanning, and on-board iJET™ technology with an easily accessible operator panel to enable full scan-to-print or scan-to-file capabilities without requiring an additional PC or software. A large 18" x 24" scan area makes it easy to scan, rare, fragile or unusual documents as well as books, textured originals and very thick originals. As for quality, the IDEAL / CONTEX COPYmate 18 employs high-end, 48-bit CCD technology and easy-to-use color calibration for accurate scanner calibration and high-quality output.
