On 15 Feb 2014, at 20:43, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote: > On 15 February 2014 20:24, Michael Peel <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Perhaps it would be worth WMUK thinking about purchasing such equipment, >> either to be made available in the office (which would then require travel >> costs, or postal costs and volunteer time in the office to scan posted >> material in), or to be sent around to interested volunteers? >> Of course, both purchase and maintenance costs should be thought about here, >> both for the machine itself and for the equipment that’s needed to interface >> with it, and also insurance costs... Depending on demand and durability, >> that may or may not make this cost-effective. >> Or maybe there are renting-on-demand options available for equivalent, more >> recent, equipment that can do the job? >> (It’s not a white elephant so long as the up-front costs turn out to be >> worthwhile, given that it shouldn't cost much to recycle it if it breaks…) > > > Hmm. Do we have any vague ideas on numbers? > > * How often do we get a reasonable chance at a cache of unscanned negatives? > * How many smaller museums or archives would have unscanned film to > offer in such a case? > * How many people with private collections of negatives that they've > never gotten around to scanning (e.g., me) would suddenly have a huge > pile of stuff to donate to Commons just given the opportunity?
Really, the important questions here are: who has collections that would benefit Wikimedia and need scanning, and who has the time to scan and upload them? It shouldn’t really be a question about equipment cost beyond the cost-effectiveness of scanning and sharing them. Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
