A. Every book is carefully hand checked by our operators before scanning. Any loose sheets are identified at this stage and scanned separately. The page can them be inserted at the correct location using the integrated BookScan Editor software.

A. Our scanners are equipped with specially designed soft cover clamps to cope with paper back, and soft bound documents.

A. Yes. Colour Scans are available. We can also use a technique known as 'Image Segmentation' to allow a mixture of output formats on the same scanned page keeping file sizes to a minimum. So for example a page could combine binary (black and white) text with greyscale or full colour images.

A. Clamps hold the book in place so that the page is as flat as possible when the photograph is taken. The scanning software then automatically detects these clamps and removes them from the scanned image. The editing software also has a in-built correction feature to minimise page curvature. Other features of the software editor include de skewing and brightness / contrast adjustment.

A. Because the scanner works by scanning both sides of each page in a book, every other page in a book with single-sided text will be blank. These pages can be easily removed in post processing with the BookScan Editor software. Other blank pages can also be removed where necessary.

A. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It refers to the process by which a scanned document is electronically analysed, so that the text information can be extracted from the image and reproduced as a text file. Text generated by OCR is often input into text search databases, allowing retrieval of the original scanned image based on its content. This text information can also be embedded in your PDF or Word file to make these documents fully searchable as if they were pure text files.

A. The OCR software applies heuristic analysis as well as image detection to scanned files. This means that the software works by identifying words and phrases as well as individual letters, therefore a wide variety in text styles can be accommodated.

A. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a flexible standard that it is widely supported by many image processing applications. We use TIFF for black & white images as the TIFF compression algorithm used is best suited to this application. JPEG on the other hand is used for its ability to compress colour image file sizes. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) compression is superior to other formats such as GIF for reproducing full-colour and greyscale images, but JPEG is still a 'lossy' form of compression, meaning that parts of the image are discarded in the process of converting it to a JPEG file. Conservative levels of JPEG compression can have negligible impact on the resulting image as far as the human eye is concerned, and still reduce the file to a fraction of its original size. At higher levels of compression however image blurring and 'artifacts' can appear, though this is the compromise necessary to achieve very small file sizes.

A.The short answer is that no storage media is going to last forever. However it is generally accepted that microfilm/microfiche has the longest life span (approximately 100 years), it is also immune to the obsolescence that can affect file formats in the fast moving software industry. All that is needed to view microfilm is a light source. However for integrating your electronic-documents with a computerised environment digital storage formats are needed. The DVD/CD formats we offer have an estimated life span of around 30 years. We can also provide documents on hard disk to meet your requirements.

A. PDF is a file format developed by Adobe to allow documents to be viewed regardless of the original software, hardware, or operating system which the document was created on. This makes PDF a truly portable format, and as such it has become the de facto standard for the exchange of electronic documentation.

Adobe makes their Acrobat Reader package freely available for download here.

A. No we do not charge extra for colour scans. However, colour scans will drastically increase the file size of your document, so we advise you to only use colour where necessary. It should also be noted that binary text has better OCR processing results.

A. Book Scan Bureau cannot be held responsible for any breaches of copyright caused by the service we are providing to our customers. It is your responsibility to establish the necessary copyright permissions for the material you require scanning.