How to digitize a book

The Folger Shakespeare Library’s blog, The Collation, provides an estimate that it’ll take 3-5 hours to digitize a 200-page book. But . . . there are books which are more stubborn. How to make this page lie flat? It’s mouse-trapping, (in the metaphorical sense) — you can’t just stick your thumb in the corner to hold it down. Making a digital copy of a single page of this one took about 5 minutes. The book concerned is Britain’s Remembrancer (1628) by George Wither (1588-1667). Chris Nulty, a photographer at the Folger, describes the process, which involves not his thumb but transparent plexiglass “fingers” which hold down the corners. There are several pictures at that link showing the process more clearly than words can.

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