Damage caused by Hand-held scanners

[Heinrich C. Kuhn]

Dear Prof. emiller at calvin.edu,

   Glenn Remelts asked on your behlaf the recipients of
the listserv-list "Web4lib" about possible dammages done 
by scanning with handheld scanners:


> My question: Should the archivist be concerned? If not, does anyone
> know where we can locate a document (or documents) that  
> conclusively says scanning with a hand-held scanner is not harmful.

I have rather serious doubts, whether it will be possible
to find any rather serious document that would demonstrate
or even just claim, that scanning with hand-held scanners
can never and under no circumstances whatsoever dammage
whatsoever document. 

I certainly would not permit anybody to use a handheld
scanner on manuscripts written on parchment where a rather 
thick ink produced notable "unflatness" of the surface. 
I would not be happy about the use of hand-held scanners 
on very brittle paper or on the treces of some sorts of pencils 
either. The same holds true for some other materials or 
combinations of materials. I would, however, not have any 
problems concerning the use of such  scanners on laserprinted 
documents on decent paper. The same holds true for some other 
materials or combinations  of materials. The bottom line is the 
usual one: "it depends ...".

In your case it is for the archivist to take the decission.
The archivist may be wrong, but there's no way for me to
say that he or she *must* be wrong.

But: I's advice you to suggest to the archicist to photograph
the documents you are interested in, instead of scanning them.
That should carry less risk of dammage and should give you
better resolution than any hand-held scanner can provide. 
You then can use a reader-printer to make yourself printouts
- which you then can scan, or, if your institution has the
necessary ecquipment, or access to it, you can scan directly
from the film.

HTH

Heinrich C. Kuhn


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