I'm temporarily done with the arranging, describing, and thinking part of the forestry project at work. For the last week I have been vegetating in front of a scanner and it is a nice change. Recently my complacent little scanning world was rocked by the advent of new technology. I must adapt or go the way of the Piltdown Man.
We used to have a traditional flatbed scanner, and could maybe pump out 20 scans an hour. They just opened a new digital scanning lab in the library and we've been using these auto-feed scanners they have. You just put a stack of paper in there and the machine sucks them up and scans both sides of the paper. We can pop out about 100 high quality .tif images an hour now. This will help to meet our goal of 15,000 images we promised the people who gave us the grant money to do this.
The only drawback is, with the fast scanner, I spend all my time working and don't have time to read at work anymore. Today I even resorted to photocopying an article in the November 2002 issue of The Journal of Southern History so I could take it home to read. The article is called "(Un)Furl That Banner: The Response of White Southerners to the Civil War Centennial of 1961 - 1965."
I can't wait to read it. I have to pack a couple boxes of books in preparation for my move so I can enjoy the article guilt-free.
That's terrible my job has progressed to the point where I can't read at work anymore.
