Port Washington Library Leaps into the 21st Century

The Port Washington Public Library (PWPL) held its first in a series of four free demonstration nights last week to introduce patrons to its Library Scan Station. PWPL is the first library in Nassau County to acquire the machine.

"We hope to make it easy for people to scan their important photographs, any type of document, or to be able to take information from research or reference books," said Corinne Camarata, PWPL's assistant director.

The Library Scan Station enables users to scan, share and save files via a USB drive, through their e-mail or by posting to a social media site. Images can be scanned in high resolution (up to 600 DPI) in either black-and-white or color and saved as a TIFF, JPEG, PDF, scannable PDF, Word or HTML file.

"They may want to capture a special page out of a historical book for a research paper that they'd be doing, but those books can't leave the library," Camarata explained. "This scanner would allow for students to put the reference right into their paper. I think that's the advantage of it as opposed to taking a book to the copy machine, copying what you want and then half the time it doesn't fit neatly or cleanly into your work."

Last Wednesday, May 5, patrons were shown all the features of the Library Scan Station by reference librarian Keith Klang. "It's great for stuff that you can't take out, tear out or clip out such as older articles and manuscripts," Klang said.

Other uses include scanning family photos and old yearbooks to share with friends and family online. The station has a large 11" x 17" scanning area that allows book-edge scanning that eliminates damage to book spines and enables full capture of the material. After scanning, the user can zoom, rotate or crop images as needed. The touch-screen technology, similar to the iPhone, uses large, intuitive graphic icons to lead the user through the screens.

The Library Scan Station will also contribute to the greening of the library by eliminating the usage of wasteful copy paper and the need the paper and toner.

"Basically that's, it eliminates the need for printing or for the use of toner, but it's a very fast, high quality and user friendly piece of equipment," Camarata said. "We have other scanners here, but none can work this quickly and this easily."

Internally, the reference library at Port Washington has been using the station to preserve materials and digitize their collections. Digitally storing materials will also enable greater access to materials for the general public, researchers and scholars.

Currently the Library Scan Station is in 11 public libraries throughout the Long Island area, including the one here in Port Washington. Additionally, it has cropped up in college and university libraries including Queens College. "Apple made it so easy for me to share music and photos through my phone and computer," said David, a Queens College student. "Finally a piece of technology created to benefit my studies. The Library Scan Station rocks." 

It's also featured in libraries at such prestigious institutions as Boston University and Yale Medical School. The majority of students have been using the Library Scan Station to archive class notes and scan books, enabling them to avoid purchasing costly text books.

"It's a very high-quality scanner as well, so we think it will have a lot of potential to help users," Camarata said. "And that's why we are giving the demos to the public on Wednesday nights, because we want to make people aware of the new service and also make them aware that there is no cost to use the scanner."

Additional free demonstrations will be held on May 12, 19 and 26 from 7 to 8 p.m. in the reference library on the PWPL's second floor. To sign up for the demonstration, call (516) 883-4400.