Query: Scanning equipment for old books?

[Niclas Wallin <niclas.wallin@skriptoriet.se>]

Dear subscribers,

On behalf of The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, the =
Library (KSLAB), I want to ask the following:

1. The Academy wants to scan some books published 1850 and later. To be =
published on the Internet later on. What kind of equipment works best? =
We think that OCR treatment will be necessary, and since we have =
national characters the standard software (in the U.S.) won=B4t work. =
However, the scanning machines used needn=B4t differ between our =
countries.

Could some one please give us suggestions?

One problem is to get the text near the spine without to much =
distorsion. That would make it difficult for the OCR equipment we guess. =
Could any kind of special equipment solve this problem?

Looking forward to any answer, which I would forward to the Swedish =
mailing list BIBLIST for Swedish librarians.

Best regards,

Niclas S. Wallin
Skriptoriet Konsulttj=E4nster, Sweden