Wolfenbütteler Buchspiegel

Preservation approved digitization with an opening angle of only 45° 

Anyone who has ever scanned very old books knows how fragile these precious items are. They have often been around for centuries, and the ravages of time have made the pages porous and the spines brittle. For such cases, we have various solutions within our book2net product range that meet these special requirements and allow gentle yet productive scanning with a reduced opening angle of between 110° and 90°: from our desktop devices such as the Falcon and the Lizard to our double camera head system Cobra and our absolute high-end system, the book2net Dragon.

But even our devices can reach their limits with books in a particularly critical state of preservation. There are cases where a book can only be opened at a minimum angle of 45°. This is where the Wolfenbütteler Buchspiegel comes into play. As a joint development by Kaiser Fototechnik, Image Engineering and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, it was specially designed for digitizing such sensitive works. Moreover, the system is flexible and allows users to choose their own camera and lighting unit.

We are delighted to be able to offer this system to our customers as part of our portfolio. Equipped with our own book2net software and the HD camera systems (M70 or M150), the Wolfenbüttel Buchspiegel offers preservation care with the highest scanning quality.

But how exactly does the Wolfenbütteler Buchspiegel operate?

The books are placed in a V-shaped wedge of support panels with an opening angle of 45°. This angle in itself is not ideal, as the closer the area to be scanned is to the book fold, the more distortion occurs when scanning from above. To avoid such unsightly results, a mirror is used. To be more precise: The V-shaped glass plate, which is gently pressed onto the open double page, consists of a glass plate on one side, which presses one half of the double page, namely the half that is currently being scanned, smoothly. On the other side of the plate is a mirror. The page to be scanned is therefore mirrored and the mirror image is captured by the camera.

The ingenious design ensures that an image is created that looks as if the book page had been captured vertically − only mirror-inverted. The software mirrors the image again so that an exact copy of the original is ultimately saved.

The Wolfenbütteler Buchspiegel is suitable for books up to 20 cm thick. Formats with a maximum page size of 45 x 45 cm can be captured, i.e. easily pages in A3 format. The scanner is designed for particularly gentle handling of precious old books such as illuminated manuscripts in several respects. These include the book spine support with foam filling and fabric cover and the padded book page supports. You can also purchase a foot release for the camera and a lighting system with 272 LEDs. Thanks to the lighting unit’s thermal management, brightness and color temperature remain unchanged regardless of whether the temperature of the device or the room changes.

So, if you want to digitize valuable library collections with extremely sensitive spines and folds, the Wolfenbütteler Buchspiegel is a sophisticated system that digitally preserves every page for future generations in a gentle process.