Copying and preservation...

[kegmcnabb]

A friend of mine has a large collection of handwritten parts for a complete polka band. These were arrangements made by his father for his popular polka band that played around NE Wisconsin back in the day. The parts have been stored for years after the demise of the band. We are putting a band together to begin playing this book again BUT feel the parts should be copied for safety and for their own preservation as the originals are starting to show their age.

What is the best way to do this?

I am presently scanning into Adobe Acrobat files. The parts are on pages slightly smaller that letter sized and Adobe automatically resizes the image to fit the page. Good for aging eyes in questionable light.

This seems to work fine but was wondering if there are better ways or suggestions on how to best preserve this music.

Thanks!

[Dan Schultz]

As long as the government and schools use Adobe, the .pdf format is not likely to go away... at least not for several lifetimes. I am in the process of scanning about everything I can get my hands on... including my community band 800+ chart library.

Once the charts are scanned, they can be sealed in storage bags and only touched again in an emergency.