Workshopping: Final Essay

For my final project I am continuing my exploration of the digitization of books from a previous course, and the future possibilities therein. Last year, as part of another course, I acquired a rather interesting-looking book published in the late 19th century. The book has seen better days, the front cover came off. But a past owner saw fit to sew it back on. The end result is a unique frankenbook that is one of a kind.

I have always been secretly a little annoyed with the approach to the digitization of books. I cannot help but see them as objects, not just pages of text. I think of large books of choir songs, with wooden covers and clasps. Or books with secret paintings on the fore-edges. Books that still have the chains on them from way back when library books were chained to the shelves. Books that have the title inscribed on the fore-edge, not the spine. All these features are either lost- or not accurately represented in the case of details on the cover- when a book is reduced to 2-dimensional images.

Frankenbook in hand, I set out to see if I could digitize the book, as an object, in 3D. I was inspired by the Smithsonian Institutions awesome undertaking: Smithsonian X 3D. The team is (slowly) digitizing items from all of the museums within the Smithsonian collective. The 3D models are viewable on their website- you can even download it and 3D print it. They have yet to digitize a book. The British Library has dipped their toes in, they have digitized three books from a collection as a proof of concept. But my question was, as the prices come down and 3D imaging technologies become more available and easier to use (you can download AutoDesk's 123D Catch as an app for your phone and make 3D models) can this technique be utilized in future book digitization projects?

I spent the semester trying every possible method I had at hand and delving deeper into the world of 3D imaging. As I worked on it I cleared up some misconceptions I had and discovered new things. I had always just assumed I would be scanning the object with lasers. I did not know I could create a 3D mesh from photographs of the object. Nor did I know that there was a program that would do it for you automatically (the above mentioned ReMake). I also went into this expecting a dazzling, crisp and clear, high resolution 3D model. I was expecting something along the lines of the examples I had seen.

I am not going to lie, it was downright frustrating at times. I worked with a few different technicians and looked to internet forums for support. Part of the problem was the material I was working with, this combined with the limitations of the technology available to me (somewhere along the lines of I’m sorry, we don’t have $10,00 equipment).  

More than once I felt this frustration. (Clip from the movie Office Space.)

Along the way I learned about how the scanners work and also the amount of post-production work that has to go into the mesh before a finalized version is complete. The problem with the material was that the scanner is calibrated to scan an object without scanning the surface it is sitting on. It ignores flat surfaces, aka most of my book. It would start scanning the raised edges of the stitches and as I walked around it would start giving me errors, not recognizing my flat book cover as an object. Even when we tried propping it on an angle, the final scan came out looking just horrible. In the end the method that worked best for me was using ReMake to create a mesh from photographs.

An incomplete scan.

My final essay will be me writing about my adventures into the world of 3D imaging and what I have learned about it along the way and how it can be applied to digitization projects.