Technology

This section is designed to share information about the technology used in this book. You may use it toward the production of your own specialized book.

Database

I designed a customized application in Microsoft Access for data entry and report generation. All statistics used in the book are generated from the raw data. Please contact me if you would like to use the shell of the application I created for your own purposes. Knowledge of Access and/or programming in Visual Basic is a plus, although not required. It may be useful for you to find a colleague who has these skills if you lack them. For the Minnesota project, the database has about 1600 records.

Images

I used a portable Canon flatbed scanner to scan notes. The scanner is thin enough so that I can carry it in the bag for my laptop, which I take to major shows. I can then scan notes as I find them.

Images are scanned at 300dpi and saved in TIFF format. By saving as TIFF, you have an image which can be used in the future as the master image if needed. I store all source images in an archive. I edit the images using Thumbs Plus 7.0. The software is easy to use. There are five main edits that I make with each image.

	Rotate to line: used to make the image level if not scanned perfectly square.
	Crop to selection: used to trim away excess area around the note.
	Sharpen: on higher grade notes, sharpening brings out the detail in the vignettes. On low grade notes, it does not help much.
	Reduce to 150dpi: This resolution is best for the Access application, as images over 700K slow it down in report generation.
	Save as GIF: This file format is ideal for scans of notes. JPGs suffer from problems when rescaling images, and are larger than necessary.

Reports

Access is versatile to permit highly specialized reports, including the main catalog section that contains images.

Printing

I print the reports straight to PDF using the Adobe PDF printer driver. It is important that images are not downsampled or otherwise altered by Adobe, and that all fonts are embedded in the PDF. There are some technical issues related to certain fonts I used, which I will explain as needed. These output files are ready for printing, whether from your own Laserjet printer or for a commercial printing company.