Friday, September 30, 2011

A new toy!

The most wonderful new technological device that I've seen lately, that I just HAD to have, even though I don't generally go for the latest and greatest, is the Flip Pal. It's a portable scanner that uses batteries, has it's own SD card. It has a software feature that allows the photos to be "stitched" together, provided there's enough overlap.

And check this out for all you hardcore genealogists out there: it's use is approved by the National Archives and Records Administration! Check out DearMyrtle (http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2011/08/flippal-scanner-ok-to-use-at-nara-i.html) and the National Archives policy on handheld scanners (http://www.archives.gov/research/order/scanning.html#hand).

I've never had a portable scanner, I would generally do things the "old-fashioned way"; print it out, and then bring it home to put on my 3-in-1 copier, scanner, printer fax thingy. Then I can make digital images of documents. With this new toy, (I suppose I should really call it a tool!), I can skip the printing out part, and just make a digital image. It's reasonably priced, and you can even use it on microfilm copier/readers (not the projection kind, but the ones that have the image appear on a screen.)

The only drawback that I can find is that most archivists have never seen it, so they don't yet have a policy on whether to allow it or not. It's just the coolest thing! I'm looking forward to playing with it a bunch more in the upcoming months!