Analogue Lives! (SOS/Muzines)

[MOF]

Hi Desmond, I'm uploading the first 17 pages of International Musician December 1979.
I couldn't find a text box, so just to let you know that I'm slowly working my way through the scanning process. Hopefully they are good enough quality. Zipping didn't massively reduce the file size. Cheers from MOF.

[muzines]

Hi Desmond, I'm uploading the first 17 pages of International Musician December 1979.

Ah, that was you! Thanks - I wondered why I had no contact details and something appeared out of the blue!

I couldn't find a text box, so just to let you know that I'm slowly working my way through the scanning process. Hopefully they are good enough quality. Zipping didn't massively reduce the file size. Cheers from MOF.

The Contribute form lets you say "I'm scanning this particular issue" and add whatever issues you are referring to, lets you add you contact details and so on. I have a workflow for handling this, and it lets me know what people are planning to donate, and lets me get in touch to avoid duplication - eg "Someone's already scanning this, so you don't need to repeat the work!") - so that's the preferred workflow.

600dpi TIFFs are pretty sizeable, so yes, please upload in chunks of 1-2GB or so, my Dropbox can only handle about 6GB at a time... If 300dpi speeds up the scan process, then that's easier to handle, and for this old content, it's not a quality problem.

These early IM's are a pain to scan (we've done plenty of them!) so I appreciate you helping with this. Make sure that you apply pressure while scanning otherwise the pages tend to go wobbly from warping. If pages have folded corners etc, it's preferable to fold them over flat, as it saves me having to Photoshop fix hundreds of pages - same with straightening pages - if you can align the page edges to the scanner edge while scanning, that again saves manual fixes of these - this stuff can make a difference of taking minutes to process scans to taking hours.

Having said that, I'd rather have adequate scans than no scans at all, and if I have to do extra work to fix them, then that's what I do, so...

[MOF]

Hi Desmond, I think I’ve done what you asked for, I tried to keep pressure on the pages, that issue was stored vertically and moved slightly in the box so there are slight undulations in the pages.
I checked that that issue wasn’t owned before scanning.
Let me know if you’d like any re-scans. I might go over to 300dpi except for the front covers.

[muzines]

Hi Desmond, I think I’ve done what you asked for, I tried to keep pressure on the pages, that issue was stored vertically and moved slightly in the box so there are slight undulations in the pages.

Great! These old mags are thick and it's indeed often a struggle to get them flat.

I checked that that issue wasn’t owned before scanning.

What I meant by the above is that there's generally activity that happens *before* something can be updated on the site - for instance, there are many issues that I don't own (and are flagged as such on the site), but *are* owned by contributors - some of whom hypothetically may be literally scanning that issue as we speak (much as you are now). So Mike (or someone else, but mostly Mike as he's a legend ) might have been scanning IM Dec 1979, and then when done, sends it to me, at which point I mark that we now have it and the scan is complete.

While he was scanning that issue, if someone else came along and using the Contribute form essentially was saying "Hey, I have IM Dec 79 and I'm happy to scan it for you", I'd be able to reply thanking them but saying that it's unnecessary as it's already being scanned by someone else, or perhaps to ask to focus on other issues they have that I know aren't available to us, etc.

I generally don't mark an issue on the site as "Donated" or even "Donation - Incoming" when someone promises issues to us as a lot of the time, for various reasons, those promised issues don't turn up, get forgotten about, the donor doesn't get round to it or has more important things to do etc. So I'll only change the status of donor issues when they actually arrive (physically or as scans).

Let me know if you’d like any re-scans.

I don't think that's necessary, thanks. It was more the first opportunity I had to give some feedback, as sometimes little things can make a big difference in the work involved processing them, and in this case this thread was the only way of communicating that stuff because I had no other way of contacting you.

For example I've had issues for example that, un-noticed while scanning, had some junk or bit of paper between one of the pages that falls out onto the scanner and now every scanned page has an annoying blob in slightly different positions on every page. It doesn't take many complete magazine rescans, or 200-page Photoshop patch-ups to at least build in some regular checks to see if anything fell out of the pages while scanning that needs to be removed!

I might go over to 300dpi except for the front covers.

Yep, generally 300dpi is plenty fine for us. One of the benefits of my approach to this archive is that the scans are not the archive, they are just part of it, and they are in many ways raw material to extract the contents from - so there's less pressure try to find perfect quality issues and scan them immaculately, which would dramatically slow down how much content we could get through. Of course, where issues are poor, I will mark as such and this lets us try to find better copies, but in generally, as long as the scans are as flat as possible, not blurry, don't have huge dark edges, are in colour and scanned at 300dppi, don't have pages/content missing and huge corner folds etc, we can work with them!

Thanks - these efforts are much appreciated!

[Arpangel]

I know, I know... A mate bought one last year with a MIDI retrofit for around £24k ! it's in lovely nick and sounds superb, but OMG!

I wonder what his is going to be worth in ten years time? that would put it into perspective, financially, but I don’t think as an investment, vintage synths are going to threaten bricks and mortar just yet, and the market is very, very small!