Hi, Katy. I'm forwarding a response to your question
from one of our reference librarians. Hope this helps.
Leslie O'Brien
Virginia Tech
The Virginia Tech Library has two ScanPro units and we have been very
pleased with their performance. We decided to buy all of the
options so both machines scan standard film and fiche, ultra-fiche,
and micro-cards. We also purchased the AutoScan
feature.
Most, but not all, of our customers prefer the ScanPro machines over the
old fashioned reader printers we have from Canon and Minolta.
There is a small group of long time users, mainly genealogists, who are
so familiar with the older machines that they have been slow to
adapt. But, when you show them they can produce dramatically better
copies, they have been impressed as well.
The library�s collection of civil war records gets a lot of use and the
quality of the prints one can produce with the older machines is very
low. It has been a frustrating experience for many. The
ScanPro machines clean up and straighten the images and produce vastly
superior prints (as well as scanned images). The Library does not
charge for printing and having ScanPro has allowed us to save on paper as
you scan everything first and then print. With the older machines
you print and then try to make the necessary adjustments to produce a
legible copy, sometimes with little success.
The AutoScan feature, whereby you can automatically scan multiple pages,
is a mixed bag. It works great for some film but in other cases the
results are poor. It all depends on how the original document was
filmed. Where there are clearly defined borders and the spacing of
images is very even, the AutoScan can work very well and be a big time
saver. But, many journals are filmed as two pages and that produces
some odd results. Sometimes the software scans each page and other
times it scans two pages as if it were a single page. It is nice to
have one machine with this capability, though.
We bought the first machine a year ago and so far we have had no
maintenance or performance problems. We bought a second machine
shortly before fall semester.
Previously, our modus operandi for handling paper jams, machine hiccups,
and poor quality prints was to move the patron to a different machine,
sometimes to 3 or 4 machines before hitting one that worked sufficiently
well. Now, with ScanPro, we show patrons how it works and
relax.
We are not renewing maintenance contracts on the older Canon and Minolta
machines. Eventually, we will have a small number of ScanPro
machines (or similar products) only in our microforms area.
Feel free to contact me with questions (540-231-9231).
Dave Beagle
Virginia Tech Libraries
At 05:48 PM 6/7/2011, you wrote:
Hi serialists,
We are considering purchase of a ScanPro microfilm scanner/reader and
would like to hear feedback from anyone who has experience with them. If
you have experience with similar products, we�d like to know about that,
too!
Please respond to the list, so others can benefit from your
knowledge. ;)
Katy G.
Katy Ginanni, Collection Development Librarian
Hunter Library
Western Carolina University
176 Central Drive
Cullowhee, NC 28723
ksginanni@email.wcu.edu
828-227-3729 office
Happy birthday, Peace Corps! 3/1/61