Re: Somewhat OT: Music Scanning Query

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

We've used a el cheapo flatbed scanner with good results. In truth,
most flatbed scanners are of a quality that is quite fine for such
scanning. You may wish to scan at 600dpi or higher for archival
purposes, but for web display or even for laser-printing purposes, 
a scan at 200dpi or less is more than adequate. 

For music only, use of Adobe Acrobat's text capabilities may be excessive,
but we've been meaning to explore using it to make the scans searchable by
lyric (there would still need to be authority files and other work to
account for variant spellings in a general archive), which should work
well. Acrobat also provides a way of storing a sheaf of pages in one,
many-paged unit, which will make some aspects of your work much easier.

You might want to focus on scanning for now, and to rescan with Acrobat
once you are comfortable with other aspects of what you are doing.

Hope this helps,
ari

At 04:24 PM 1/24/01 -0500, you wrote:
>This is somewhat off topic (I apologize), but I'll bet that there are mavens 
>out there who can answer my questions (and I don't know where else to ask).  
>
>I'm interested in getting a scanner to use with my collection of old Yiddish 
>song books, choral arrangements and sheet music.  Some of the material is 
>quite old and not in the greatest shape.  In addition, I have a large 
>collection of hand-notated transcriptions of klezmer and Hasidic tunes.  
>
>Does anyone have any idea what kind of resolution I will need to make good, 
>clean scans of this material?  Any other issues regarding contrast (for 
>example, faint notes on yellowed paper)?  
>
>Could I use any flatbed scanner, or (since I'm scanning books), does it need 
>to be any special type?  
>
>I've got a Mac PowerBook G3 with USB.  
>
>Finally, any ideas regarding format?  Is it worth investing in Adobe Acrobat? 
> 
>
>I'm a novice at this, so any info would be appreciated!  
>
>Thanks very much in advance, 
>
>Jeff Warschauer
>
>

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