That is precisely why they decided to wait for the technology to improve
before they sank hundreds of thousands of tax payer's money into a system. I
think other government agencies can learn from this. Just because a type of
technology is "new" doesn't necessarily mean it's the correct technology or
correct level of technology for a specific project. Don't get me wrong, I
would LOVE to see all the photography (over 1,000,000 images) at the Coast
Guard scanned in on CD-ROM and distributed to any archive that requested it
(including libraries at universities, etc.), but I have a lot of respect for
the historian who recognized that the best technology for completing the
project is not available for a reasonable amount of money at this time.

The point of my message was to illustrate, like the gentleman from the Navy,
that sometimes we're too quick to embrace the "fantastic and new" only to
find out that it's not exactly what we need for a particular task. In the
end, it ends up costing everybody more.

Standard disclaimers...

Amy Marshall
p.s. I don't have the hard figures on what the Navy spent for their system,
but, you can imagine DOD, it's top of the line so a figure over $100,000 is
not out of line for an estimate - hardly a non-professional system...


>Please do not confuse a bad digitized image with an impossible technology.
>Of course digitized images are suitable for publication-the printing
>industry has been using digital scanners to produce the photographs used in
>most publications for at least 15 years. What is new is desktop scanners
>than non-professionals can use. It will take a while before skill catches
>up with hardware, I suspect. I know my scans and those of my students
>improve measurably with practice, and with comparison with what others have
>been able to achieve.
>
>ivy
>
>
>Ivy Fleck Strickler                     Phone 215-895-1637
>Drexel University                       Fax 215-895-4917
>Nesbitt College of Design Arts          [log in to unmask]
>Philadelphia, PA 19104
>
>"Never forget that life is like a Fellini movie, and you're getting to see
>it for free=8A"
>