A Gentle Giant
A 200-pound aluminum cast metal high-speed robotic scanner is hard at work in Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.
The machine, which belongs to Kirtas Technologies, Inc. in Victor, N.Y., can scan up to 2,400 pages an hour and has, on average, scanned about 300 documents a day since arriving in Kroch Library last fall. Because it cradles books in a V-shape, uses blown air to separate their pages and has a vacuum mechanism on its arm to pick up and turn pages, the scanner is, in fact, gentler on books than a human would be.
The scanner, which was recently joined by another special device that can handle fold-outs, is supporting the Microsoft Live Book Search digitization project, which was initiated in October 2006 when the Library entered into an agreement with Microsoft to digitize materials from Cornell’s collections and make then available online.
While most of the materials being digitized as part of the partnership are being shipped to Kirtas for high-quality scanning, rare and valuable works, such as Cornell’s Wordsworth Collection, are being scanned in-house.