Grandmother Mary Ellen Gee’s Scrapbook

Grandmother Mary Ellen Gee’s Scrapbook

A couple of years ago my cousin Loni Hackworth told me about a scrapbook that she had acquired and wanted to know how to scan it into digital format.  She took it to a local place, but the pages were too large for an ordinary flatbed scanner.  I persuaded her to send me the book and I would see what I could do with the digitalizing of the book.  The pages were 15’x12’ and the scrapbook paper was friable and disintegrating at the edges.  The paper was pulp paper and not acid free.  It was evident to me that this treasure of historical documents would soon be lost.  It would not be a good idea for this to be sent to every descendant to look at.  The solution was to digitize it.  Since I could not find a ready access to a large flat bed scanner, I opted to take my digital camera and photograph the pages.  I proceeded to do this and made a file on my computer with the results.

I was not particularly happy with the results, because there were some booklets that grandmother pasted into her scrapbook that I wanted the information from that I could not acquire easily with the digital camera.  I put the scrapbook in our records closet with all of the genealogy and photographs that we have accumulated and thought that I would wait until I had some time and see if I could resolve my problem.  From time to time I would see the scrapbook and say to myself that I needed to get back to it.  Well time has a way of flying by!

Last fall we took a cruise from Rotterdam to Scotland, Shetland Islands, Norway, and Denmark.  They had a computer class on the ship.  As you probably know I am interested in computers.  I thought that I might be able to learn something new, so I took a number of the classes.  I did learn some things that I found quite helpful.  One of the things that I found useful was stitching photos together.  This was usually used to make panorama shots from a series of individual photos.  I experimented and found that it worked quite nicely.  Wondered if I could use this technique to scan in documents that were too large for my scanner.  In particular, I wondered if I could scan grandmother Gee’s scrapbook, but you know how things go, we get so busy we don’t get things done that are not on our top priority list.

One morning last week, I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I thought I needed to try and scan that scrapbook.  I had written a short piece for my “Letters from Grandpa” blog about my musical experiences and included some photos.  My wife Alice said she did not have something like that to write about.  One of our children commented that she did not know that her mother had taken piano lessons as a young girl.  Alice said she could write about that aspect of her life and proceeded to do just that.  We suddenly realized that our children knew only what they had experienced while living with us and little about what happened before they came into the family.  To illustrate the chapter in her life, she wanted a photo of the singing group that she was in when we lived in Lander.  We went to the records closet looking for photos of the singing group, which we found.  Alice noticed grandmother Gee’s scrapbook and mentioned that I ought to scan the book in.  The spirit’s promptings had fallen on deaf ears, but now I was moved to action.

I spent part of two days scanning in the pages of the scrapbook.  I have four scanners in my possession; a HP scanner copier printer, an Epson flatbed scanner, a Fujitsu Scan Snap and a Cannon portable flatbed scanner that my wife bought me for a present.  I wanted a portable scanner to take with us when we went to libraries, so I would not have to pay for copies of books and documents.  This was the best copier to use for this task and it allowed access from all sides.  I found that the pages of the scrapbook would fit nicely and cover the whole platen and extend about 5 inches on one side.  This allowed me to take just two scans for one page.  The next thing I needed to do was to stitch the two scans together.  My Cannon scanner came with some photo editing software by Arcsoft.  I used the help feature to find out if there was a stitching accessory.  It did have one and I stitched my first two scans together.  The result was passable, but as I went further into the scanning, I found that the results of the stitching were not acceptable.  There was overlap and shadowing.  I had to see if the program that I used on the cruise would produce better results.  The Arcsoft program required the left and the right side to be lined up in that order.  Windows Live Photo Gallery panorama option does not require the photos to be lined up right or left, it takes the two scans and merges them into one document correctly.  I was impressed.  I am now in the process of stitching the scanned pages together.   It may take a few more hours to complete the project, but it will look much better and be more readable than the digital photograph method.