Currently working on a project which consists of boxes containing books of varying page sizes from small pamphlets of 30 pages up to books of over 1500 pages. Some of these books have perfect binding which, contrary to its name, are far from perfect and rarely lay flat, which means I have to massage the spine to loosen the pages from the glue to handle easier.
Some of these books are side-stapled, making it impossible for the books to lay flat, so I have to remove these industrial-sized long staples by hand with the use of a paring knife. I have to remove the pages of the large paginated books a few pages at a time.
Aspects of my job can be quite time-consuming; thankfully, most of these are not in terrible condition like brittle, almost dust-like pages that fellow techs deal with in their projects.
Each book is placed on a springboard device for the left and right side pages. I have to use black molding foam pieces to have each side of the book lay flat when I bring the cradle down to take the exposure. There are also two black mats behind a few pages on each side to give off a cleaner appearance.
Flipping the pages of an older book with my left hand as I am about to bring down the cradle with glass to take an exposure of the two pages of this book.
The cloth glove I am wearing is to protect the glass from being scratched by my wedding ring. The rubber thumb is used to make it easier to turn pages, especially if they are sticking together or are as thin as tissue paper.
The software used, as seen below, is camera software called Capture One. As you can see, I wasn’t quick to remove my hand, and it landed in an exposure. To fix this, I deleted that exposure and reset the naming to continue in numerical order.
I know it sounds and looks really complicated, but I have been doing this job for the last 26 years, and in that time, things have gotten easier and far more automated than when I was scanning microfilm back in 1999.
iMartist 