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7 Feb, 4 tweets, 3 min read

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Jason Scott Profile picture
7 Feb
After "What is the life and experience of a human scanner", the biggest reaction seems to be "Why is a human there, why not a machine". Solid question, but in the 20 years of doing this book scanning, I can assure you if a machine could do something, it's doing it. Not here. Image
People then link to a panopoly of robotic scanning examples, videos, one-sheets and demonstration pages for commercial or industrial scanning setups that turn the pages. Some of them we've been linked to for almost a decade, so we're pretty familiar with them! And they're neat! ImageImageImage
In most cases, you have to calibrate the book for scanning. This process can take a while, and has to shift for each book. If every book was the same size/consistency, it'd be fine. But every book is not. Some are fragile. Others are thick.
Read 9 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
7 Feb
Some people seeing the Internet Archive bookscanning thread asked about work conditions and had various reactions to it.

There's all sorts of rules on taking photos within work spaces, but this is what the CA book scanning center looked like in roughly 2011; I got permission. ImageImageImage
It SOUNDS like a pretty quiet work environment, with the mechanical scanners shifting and people rustling books and papers. Some centers you have headphones to listen to podcasts/music. Some are in colleges, libraries, or office buildings.

Sometimes neat books go by. Often not.
It pays OK. It's a service job but you don't deal with people, you deal with books, which sits well with many folks who work in scanning. I've visited multiple centers over the last decade, in multiple countries and to various levels of announcing I'm visiting. They're solid.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
7 Feb
With a burst of interest in the Book Scanning project at the Internet Archive, allow me to link you to some of the fruits of that labor, so you can see what the results of this process are. Image
A general history of the pyrates, : from their first rise and settlement in the Island of Providence, to the present time.

1724 book! Instantly readable, zoomable.

archive.org/details/genera… Image
Jefferson and Hamilton; the struggle for democracy in America. 1925.

archive.org/details/jeffer… ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
4 Feb
Sorry, while I'm here

So, a common refrain from the cheap seats is "I can't believe we let CORPORATE INTERESTS take over the NET and we could have been DECENTRALIZED and done it RIGHT and have our FREEDOM"

You know what, no
No, no. Because when you do that whole "we'll just make it all work together thing", you end up with a spaghetti code birds' nest nightmare that interlocks and falls apart if a bat farts on it from 800 feet, and you have to get basically hope the Weirdo Batteries fix what's broke
And corporate, says this:

"We will make it work. If it doesn't work, we'll provide you a number to call."

Which is far and away the best thing if you want to get anything done; telling me to go down to fuckstick-mailing-g and beg to get help only to be told RTFM is not a fix.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
3 Feb
Still very true
Does everyone know you can also refer to items WITHIN THE ISOs or ZIPs as a static URL?

https archive dot org /download/zipfile.zip/file

This works!
Watch!

archive.org/download/GIFs_…

It rewrites the URL because infrastructure, but the above URL is permanent and is a GIF inside a CD-ROM.
Read 4 tweets
Jason Scott Profile picture
3 Feb
Sure I named the script DECANOGINATOR but let's just focus on the fact it takes over 30,000 actions before it completes one run, meaning that it is a LONG-TERM DECANOGINATOR, one of the most splendid and long lived of the nog-related nators
Not only that, the DECANOGINATOR needs a maintained and refreshed NOGLIST.TXT to function, meaning that while I don't need to take those 30,000 actions myself, I have definitely demoted myself to DECANOGINATOR MAINTENANCE, FIRST CLASS
GREETINGS FROM THE BELOVED DECK LEVEL OF THE DECANOGINATOR MAINTENANCE CREW; we are here to serve the mighty nators of the nog as they proceed on their journey; from the tiniest noginators to the most powerful decanoginators that can take a man's arm off faster than you can say
Read 4 tweets

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