Hi, Katy.  I'm forwarding a response to your question from one of our reference librarians.  Hope this helps. 
Leslie O'Brien
Virginia Tech

The Virginia Tech Library has two ScanPro units and we have been very pleased with their performance.  We decided to buy all of the options so both machines scan standard film and fiche,  ultra-fiche, and micro-cards.   We also purchased the AutoScan feature. 

Most, but not all, of our customers prefer the ScanPro machines over the old fashioned reader printers  we have from Canon and Minolta.  There is a small group of long time users, mainly genealogists, who are so familiar with the older machines that they have been slow to adapt.  But, when you show them they can produce dramatically better copies, they have been impressed as well. 

The library’s collection of civil war records gets a lot of use and the quality of the prints one can produce with the older machines is very low.  It has been a frustrating experience for many.  The ScanPro machines clean up and straighten the images and produce vastly superior prints (as well as scanned images).  The Library does not charge for printing and having ScanPro has allowed us to save on paper as you scan everything first and then print.  With the older machines you print and then try to make the necessary adjustments to produce a legible copy, sometimes with little success.

The AutoScan feature, whereby you can automatically scan multiple pages, is a mixed bag.  It works great for some film but in other cases the results are poor.  It all depends on how the original document was filmed.  Where there are clearly defined borders and the spacing of images is very even, the AutoScan can work very well and be a big time saver.  But, many journals are filmed as two pages and that produces some odd results.  Sometimes the software scans each page and other times it scans two pages as if it were a single page.  It is nice to have one machine with this capability, though.

We bought the first machine a year ago and so far we have had no maintenance or performance problems.  We bought a second machine shortly before fall semester. 

Previously, our modus operandi for handling paper jams, machine hiccups, and poor quality prints was to move the patron to a different machine, sometimes to 3 or 4 machines before hitting one that worked sufficiently well.  Now, with ScanPro, we show patrons how it works and relax.

We are not renewing maintenance contracts on the older Canon and Minolta machines.  Eventually, we  will have a small number of ScanPro machines (or similar products) only in our microforms area.   Feel free to contact me with questions (540-231-9231).

Dave Beagle
Virginia Tech Libraries


At 05:48 PM 6/7/2011, you wrote:

Hi serialists,
 
We are considering purchase of a ScanPro microfilm scanner/reader and would like to hear feedback from anyone who has experience with them. If you have experience with similar products, we’d like to know about that, too!
 
Please respond to the list, so others can benefit from your knowledge.  ;)
 
Katy G.
 
 
 
Katy Ginanni, Collection Development Librarian
Hunter Library
Western Carolina University
176 Central Drive
Cullowhee, NC 28723
ksginanni@email.wcu.edu
828-227-3729 office
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