New life of last century newspapers

At library "Rodina" of Stara Zagora city (Bulgaria) book scanner ElarSCAN A2 processes newspapers of the last century. The collection "Periodicals - Stara Zagora 1882-1944 years" and the local history fund of the library are almost completely digitized, - said director Mrs. Slava DRAGONOVA

Newspapers "Duma (Word)" for 1926 – 1944, "Zemja(Earth)" for the period 1929 – 1944 are already scanned with Elarscan. Next will be the digitalization of "Zoria (Sunrise)“ newspaper archives.

Planetary scanner Elarscan A2 is designed to work with bound, stitched and other "inconvenient" documents in offices, universities, archives, libraries, public service and document processing centers. Such scanners are also called book scanners, "face-up", "over-head", sometimes even "photographic" scanners. It is a convenient tabletop device for digitizing items - not only books and documents: originals can be awards, coins, fabric specimens, accessories, museum items, artifacts. "In contrast to usual flatbed scanners, Elarscan presents as an important tool for successful mass digitization: "to see what you scan without turning material upside-down to capture the next page“, - explains Slava DRAGONOVA. It instantly makes quality images and saves the file in the desired format. Scan time is less than that required for page turning, the maximal format A2+ (42×62.5 cm) is suitable for newspapers, books and even for albums.

The scanner was provided to the library of the Rodina by the Bulgarian partner of ELAR Corp. - company "AYA Msolutions" during preparation for a regional workshop at Stara Zagora. The aims are to study the features of modern professional scanners, to prepare discussion on the problems of preservation and access to the written heritage of Stara Zagora which is stored in local cultural institutions. During the last five years the library "Rodina" has been involved in the development of long-term conservation programmes for Stara Zagora cultural heritage. This includes digitization of endangered collections. There is a proposal for the establishment of a regional consortium of libraries and museums to use a centralized digital studio to avoid duplication, achieve greater efficiency and cost reduction in digitization. Library "Rodina" has dealt with with the digitization of collections since 2010, and since 2011 the digitized collections are part of the European digital library EUROPEANA.