Want to digitize the old diaries and pictures for WW2

Hi,

I am having some old rare photographs related to the WW2 and some letters and diaries too. My grandfather was a war hero. He kept some relics in his old cauldron. I found that last week in the attic. I love history and so, I didn't feel like donating it. I want to keep those as a collection. The papers, diaries, and photographs are too old.

I wish to digitize them. I was first thinking about scanning them on my personal scanner. On a second thought, I searched online to find the best way to convert to digital and I read that OCR is the best means to capture the old documents without damaging it. So, I may have to see the document imaging and scanning service to get quality digital format. But, I don't know whether that would be costly. Has anyone approached a document scanning service for preserving the old books or pictures in digital form? Please share your suggestion.

 

I have taken images of books and other documents with my iPad and then used an app to conduct the OCR. It is time consuming, but I enjoyed the process. (I have also used a flatbed scanner for letters and other single page documents, and photographs)

I have never used such a service as you mention.

Mark

 

I work at a printshop and while scanning isn't the main part of our business, if we do have a large scan job of photos etc, that we have to put on the flatbed part of the machine (as opposed to feeding it through like you would with 8.5x11's) we charge a 'labor' fee on top of the scanning fee, as we have to literally stand over the machine and scan each individual image. Thats usually the bulk of the cost for such a job. The actual scanned image is usually a dollar or less per image vs the $65 per hour of labor.