Digitizing Old Magazines?

"I have a lot of old video game magazines, they're nice for playing 'classic games' because a lot of classics are impossible without the manual, and hard without a magazine (the magazine obviously negates the need for a manual usually). But they'd get damaged with a flatbed scanner, and digital cameras are hard to set up right for capturing old magazines. I know that old documents are digitally archived with very high-res cameras..." So, the question is, what is the best way to capture all the information in old magazines in digital format? Does anyone have a home-built rig taking after the angled-pair-of-scanners setup that Project Gutenburg uses?

Comments

Don't destroy the magazines

[Simonetta]

I must respectfully disagree with the above reply. The magazine is not simply a print-out. It's an intact cultural artifact as a magazine. If not now, then in fifty or 100 years from now.

    Are you primarily interested in the text of the magazine articles themselves? Or the images (such as 'Mens magazines' like Club International that are primarily images)? Or are you interested in preserving the balance in the layout between the text, the images, and the adverts?

    For text primarily, use a stand for the magazine, and a 10 megapixel digital camera with a small tripod. Optical Character Recognition is the way to go in this situation. But it is hard to get the exact right program for your configuration.

    Are these magazines in English or a western European language? OCR is much easier and faster with 100 or so ASCII characters than it is with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. OCR for these languages exists but the programs are expensive if you actually buy them. Personally, I believe that because the Chinese have stolen billions of dollars worth of software from the Americans since the earliest days of computers, the Americans have no moral, ethical, or legal obligation to pay for any software developed and sold by a Chinese company. But, opinions differ on this issue.

    Keep the magazines intact. You'll regret cutting them up in the future when a more elegant solution to digitizing them appears that doesn't entail destroying the original materials.

Re:Don't destroy the magazines

[SoVeryTired]

Personally, I believe that because the Chinese have stolen billions of dollars worth of software from the Americans since the earliest days of computers, the Americans have no moral, ethical, or legal obligation to pay for any software developed and sold by a Chinese company.

Wow, just wow. I have to say that I'm saddened and a bit dissappointed to find that anyone, anywhere thinks like that anymore. If you actually gave a little more thought to that line of reasoning, you would presumably have to concede that, for example, native americans shouldn't be obliged to pay for anything, given that their land was stolen from them several hundred years ago.

It is foolish, in the extreme, to punish anyone for the mistakes their predecessors made.

Re:fair use?

[omeomi]

And people wonder why it's so easy for the RIAA to erode fair use...it's simple, when most people don't even understand what fair use is, it's easy to slowly take it away.

He's trying to not damage it.

[SEWilco]

Well, yes, there are scanners with page feeders. But he's worried about damaging his originals, so he can't follow the Project Gutenberg practice of cutting off the spines and scanning the pages. If he can't use a flatbed scanner, he might have to rig up a photo stand with the magazine under lights and a stand which holds his magazine open with the pages at right angles. Unless even that would cause damage. In that case he'll have to wait for CAT scanners to get good enough to read his magazine when it's closed.

Re:fair use?

[easyTree]

Why must lawyers be consulted before every action may proceed? Life is for living.

Daydreaming 50 years into the future..

*checks with lawyer*, *exhales*, *checks with lawyer*, *inhales*, *coughs*, *brain-implement logs: INFRINGEMENT DETECTED $50 fine*