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[narfstar]

I sit there after school.  Most of the others teachers are gone.  What am I doing? "Wasting" my time scanning old comic books for no monetary recompense. Why the heck do we do.  Notice the few names with a lot of books.  There are not a lot of us. Yet I look forward to scanning and posting my next book. Some are scanning the widely popular while I throw in a Frisky Animals or Personal Love that will probably only get a fourth of the downloads. But how else would those who like/want them get them? You just have to be a real comic book fan to do this. You vicariosly feel the joy of someone getting your book as the joy you feel when getting one of theirs that you like. I remember thinking that maybe I should not bother scanning my Terry and The Pirates as not real popular comic book wise. A couple days after uploading it a message is posted from someone who was thrilled to find Terry comics.  You just never know what one mans junk being another mans treasure.  So I will continue to scan whatever is handy at the moment. That has kinda become my methodology. I grab what is there and go with. So you are just gonna have take what I give ya like it or not

[rez]

My Hero.

Applaud Points for narfstar.

All Hail narfstar!

[JVJ]

Oh, Narfstar,
We are DEFINITELY nuts! While I don't do (much) scanning, I can't tell you how many man-years I've spent tracking down the names of obscure comic book artists by buying tons (you've seen the lists) of old comics and trying to connect the dots (and the occasional signatures). Just don't think about it too much and be happy that your passions are as non-destructive as they are. At least we're having fun...

[darkmark]

We are nuts, Narfstar.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

[OtherEric]

We're not nuts; what we are doing here is genuinely important.  Perhaps a lot of people won't grab your scans at first.  But they're out there, and they're circulating.  And they'll stay out there; I honestly expect some of scans (if not most) will still be around in some form after most of us are dead.

I'm not above looking for wildly popular books to scan; but I really want EVERYTHING PD scanned eventually.  So keep at it; every book helps.  And the scans I'm most pleased with myself for posting aren't the most popular ones I've done.

[narfstar]

How do my recent scans look?  Kilroys and Personal Love and Frisky scanned at 300 dpi and slightly edited.
Trying to improve.  Will never be a Darkmark but it beats digital camera. The scanner I have at school is comfortably located and while it scans one page I am editing the other.

[Yoc]

Hi Narf,
Just looked at Personal Love.  Frisky isn't one I collect.
For the most part they look pretty good but there is the odd page here and there (the cover being an example) were your scanner lost focus on one side of the page. 
I'm going to guess the book wasn't perfectly flat on the scanner.  I'm not trying to discourage your efforts and I hope you don't take it as anything more than an observation.
I'm betting you don't want to close the lid of the scanner to avoid damage to the book right?  It's a delicate job scanning these things.

But I do notice your pages are nicely cropped and straightened which is a nice bonus for readers and the colours look fine as well.

Keep on Scanning,
-Yoc

[narfstar]

No the book was of no real value based on condition.  The problem was the book was wrinkled.  I actually closed the cover and pressed down on it but the pages did not all press flat.  So it was the opposite problem poor quality not trying to preserve good quality.  I buy cheap junk

[JVJ]

I didn't look at the scans narfstar, but one of the techniques I've used to "almost" flatten a book while scanning is to insert a pencil between the edge of the scanner and the lid. This allows a little pressure to be applied to the spine, but not enough to hurt the book. When I was scanning a bunch of early Fox and Centaur stories from some of Bud Plant's comics, he was VERY grateful that I used that trick. Try it and tell me if it helps. Of course, it really isn't crucial with some of our books - considering the condition they are in to start with.

OtherEric said
"I'm not above looking for wildly popular books to scan; but I really want EVERYTHING PD scanned eventually.  So keep at it; every book helps."

I sure hope that you were only talking about comic "books", because "EVERYTHING PD" is a pretty BIG chunk of scanning - I believe that the Gutenberg Project is trying that and they have way more resources than we'll ever muster. But, if you ever want to tackle some old illustrated magazines from the 1890s to the 1920s, I've got plenty of them, too.

But that would be REALLY nuts.

[Yoc]

Nice technique idea Jim.
Say, those scans you did for Bud Plant, were they just covers?
If they were innards even incomplete books can be useful when combined with fiche scans as Darkmark has been showing.

-Yoc

[JVJ]

Actually, Yoc,
the scans were for Greg Sadowski's upcoming book, Super Men, for Fantagraphics. With the success of the the Fletcher Hanks book, Greg pitched a book to FTG on superheroes before Pearl Harbor and Greg came down to the SF Bay Area in June to meet up with Bud Plant at my house. Bud brought along four long boxes of Centaur, Fox, MLJ, Harvey and other early PD Golden Age books that he and Greg went through searching for content worthy of the book. While they searched, I scanned - lots of covers and individual stories. The scans are now in the possession of Greg and I erased them from my hard drive as there was A LOT of space being taken up with 600 ppi full size scans. As far as I'm concerned, they belong to Greg and, even if I still had them, I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing them. Sorry.

[darkmark]

How do my recent scans look?  Kilroys and Personal Love and Frisky scanned at 300 dpi and slightly edited.
Trying to improve.  Will never be a Darkmark but it beats digital camera. The scanner I have at school is comfortably located and while it scans one page I am editing the other.

Believe me, Narf...you would never WANT to be a Darkmark. ;-)  Thanks, though.

[Yoc]

No problem Jim, just a thought. 
I wouldn't want you to do anything you felt would wrong someone.

[JVJ]

I know you wouldn't, Yoc,
This just happens to be a rather unusual instance where I don't feel like I have the right to share them. Sorry.

[OtherEric]

OtherEric said
"I'm not above looking for wildly popular books to scan; but I really want EVERYTHING PD scanned eventually.  So keep at it; every book helps."

I sure hope that you were only talking about comic "books", because "EVERYTHING PD" is a pretty BIG chunk of scanning - I believe that the Gutenberg Project is trying that and they have way more resources than we'll ever muster. But, if you ever want to tackle some old illustrated magazines from the 1890s to the 1920s, I've got plenty of them, too.

But that would be REALLY nuts.

Oh, the only part of the project I want to work on is comic books; the few books I have that would work for PG are already posted there.  But I did mean EVERYTHING PD; I just don't expect to ever see it and know enough to pick my own little corner to work on. 

[narfstar]

And Gutenburg is doing their part.  I was surprised to find some Kurt Vonegut books were PD.

[JVJ]

Prior to 1950, Narfstar,
the copyright rules were pretty rigid and you had to actually FILE a renewal statement with the Library of Congress. Stanford University (just down the road from me) has a great database of such renewals:
http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/page?forward=home

Unfortunately, it is ONLY for books. Still it's a great reference.

Now I'm off to my final French Lesson prior to Monday's departure. A bientot!