Starting this website only 5 months ago, I have some classmates making the move from Classmates.com to ClassCreator. So they are familiar with what is over there.

A couple of my classmats comment that we have everything they do EXCEPT a scan of the entire Yearbook, where you can "turn the pages" to read. Below is his description. Actually, this sounds really nice, and would be a great addition in my opinion. Last weekend was our Reunion, and MANY classmates spent some "informal" time just sitting and looking at past Yearbooks.

Is there already a way to do this; if not, could it be added? Kind of sounds like an E Book reader where you turn pages.

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Ok, just looked at the Classmates yearbook. I'm not familiar with the type scanner, but it appears they laid the book on the scanner and it scanned both pages without distortion. So when you go to a yearbook, the front of the book comes up, then there is a page counter at the top of the page...you turn the pages at your own pace...it displays the left and right page together.

It sounds like someone uploaded a www.issuu.com link to your yearbook.

Is this something that Classmates.com (yuck!!!) does or something that a classmate did and uploaded?

Kyle Erickson wrote:

My understanding from my own classmate is that Classmates.com (shudder, hate to use that word)) provides some kind of program that the classmate themselves can do the scan. The key is a "page turning" type browser, but I can't see classes sending a Yearbook for you guys to scan. Just asking if we can have the link to do such....The class would have to figure out how they are going to scan themselves.

Classmates.com is on a roll to scan as many yearbooks as they can.

I think issuu's program is a flash presentation based on a PDF file. They'll host smaller size PDF files that you can display on your website -- but viewing it is likely to send you to their site with obligatory advertising.

The alternative is an upgraded version where you can display your own yearbook/magazine, etc. on your site -- but the cost seemed high to me @ $19 a month.

Brad - have you looked into being an issuu reseller?

Wish I knew how to write flash programs.

John Chidester wrote:

So is Classmates.com, or their 3rd Party, actually scanning these yearbooks FOR the class? That seems like a rather large project. How the heck would they get any documents to scan for a Podunk school that graduated 50-60 years ago?

All we need is a program to handle a scan done by the classmate Webmasters themselves. Why let a 3rd party charge crazy fees when could be done internally, like everything else, to a program provided on ClassCreator?

If you've scanned an entire yearbook -- especially one with 100-200+ pages, it's not as simple as it sounds.

I've done a few now. I go to a print shop that has a scanner capable of scanning 11x17" sizes -- so two pages can be done at once. Putting a hard-bound yearbook on the top of a home-style flatbed scanner and getting a good scan isn't easy.

Fedex Office charges 99 cents for each 11x17 scan - but needs a copyright waiver. At the copy shop I use, I pay 25 cents per 11x17 -- but do the work myself.

I don't know how classmates.com is getting their work done. You do know that there is an online market for old yearbooks?

I'm looking into becoming a reseller for Issuu myself -- might be able to provide the service to others for less than the $19 a month.

Here's a PR release about Classmates.com's yearbook project. CLICK HERE. When published, they said they had 30,000 yearbooks available; expect to have 70,000 by the end of 2010.

OK, I see the point. Classmates.com efforts are obviously huge, but has potential issues with our old friend Copyright laws. Google of this subject indicates DUAL copyright potential issues; both the School ownership, as well as the Commercial Photographer that took the photos in the first place.

I wonder if an afternoon at Staples or Office Depot, using their scanner, then a copy of Microsoft Reader (free download) would accomplish the similar thing on the smaller scale of a little school with 75 pages in their YearBook.

My classmates would have no interest in 30,000 plus school yearbooks, only our own and MAYBE a couple of classes each way at our same school.

I would wonder if ClassCreator could store this YearBook Scan, then read by Microsoft Reader, with theoretically minimal effort??

All I am looking for is something to interest my classmates, and to also "counter" Classmates.com supposed "advantage" in this endeavor. It doesn't have to be so big as the effort by Classmates.com.

One of our classmates published 2 books of poetry while she was still living. Reading those books from our website (very difficult to find her hard print books)using a Reader would be VERY well appreciated by my classmates. All we need is the integration of a Reader, as far as I can surmise.

Check with Staples or Office Depot to see if you can scan directly to a PDF and into one document -- and can you set the resolution of the PDF to 200x200 pixels (or smaller).

If you end up with individual scanned PDF pages, you'll need Adobe Acrobat PRO to assemble it into a book.

Here's a link to a 38 page Jr. HS yearbook. CLICK HERE The file size is about 28 MB.

a company at www.e-yearbook.com is scanning yearbooks and making them available to classmates (double ugh!) ancestry.com and others. If you ship them yearbooks - any number of years - they will scan any they have not already scanned for no charge except the shipping cost to return them. (if sent in bulk, shipping is less than $1 per book)

As I understand it based on a couple of emails their website, they will give you a didgital copy that can be "flipped" like pages in a book. Their system also scans and converts all words in the book to text and makes it seachable. I have tried this and it is amazing.

I went to Staples, and found scanning yearbook was a small fortune, and would take 2 weeks to get back.

Looking around the store, I found a Brother All in One model MFC-6490CW that scans to 11 x 17. It was on sale for $100 off marked down to $199. It actually does a very good job of scanning documents. In about an hour of scanning, I had a full document ready to upload.

I found a site that will Host book scans at www.ISSUU.com. Works very nicely.

I am doing a multi-year site with 55 years. Based on comments above, I bought the Brother scanner and Adobe Pro and it is a breeze after you get the hang of it. Issuu.com is a good place to store them. Free with advertsiing, $20 a month for unlimited numbe rof doc's. here is a link to finished product.

http://issuu.com/stanmaupin/docs/peer_1979_final?viewMode=magazine&mode=embed

You can also embed on a cc page.... see www.albemarlealumni.com for example

Big advantage of these over classmates. This one can be searched, printed (all or some pages) and downloaded by readers for free. Classmates will sell you a reprint for $60.

Great job Stan!

I recommended the Brother Scanner and it does quite well. I have not ventured in to Adobe Pro just yet, but I am seriously thinking about that.

What I was mostly impressed with is how you kept the yearbook pages straight. I was not nearly so successful, and any hints how you accomplished that would be appreciated, short of "unbinding" the yearbook. My pages slid and pushed/moved around a bit. Did you do that with some sort of assistance with the scanner guides itself, or did Adobe Pro offer more editing for clean up and straightening than the native software with the scanner?

I also used ISUU.com and stuck with the free approach as $20/month is a little serious.

Some might be interested in another "page turning" alternative that I recently found. It is still in beta testing but soon to be released. Take a look at demo at:

http://www.flipsnack.com/

Not sure if this will be just a software to buy, or a website to host, but hope to find out soon. The page turning is similar, but more defined that I see with ISUU.

Very nice work, Stan! I can't imagine the time it would take to scan 55 yearbooks, having done a few myself.

The $20/month shouldn't be too bad when you've got a big membership base.

Derrell - Adobe Acrobat Pro does page straightening, OCR and file size reduction. You can control the scanner from within it and you can insert/delete pages into a PDF document.

Yep. Adobe pro helps. I set it so it scans bigger than the page and then use Adobe to crop to the exact size of the page. This adds a step, but lets you get crisp edges and sizes. I alternate the rotation so I am always putting the corner of the page in the corner of the scanner and that seems to help a lot. Adobe automatically flips each page after it reads it.

I tried a bunch of less expensive stuff before and it was too much trouble. You had to do too much converting, etc. If you made a mistake like missing a page it was awful. I never knew I needed it, but now that I have it, I use Adobe in my work too. For example, if you want to print a webpage, you just click and it makes it a pdf you can copy, print, add to a document, etc.

Adobe has 30 day trial, also. That might help if you don;t have a long term project.

I'm going to try the alternative to Issuu. It has a lot of features like statistics, but you are paying for publishing, not displaying so I figured I would use it until I found somehting better.

I definitely want to do this. I've seen the flip book on other people's site from issuu and really want to do it but have NO idea how to scan without bending the pages too far. Any ideas?

This is a great thread that needs to be revived for our new members to read! Thanks for all the info!

I scanned my yearbook and used issuu. I notice that classmates.com does not use a clean yearbook - often there are signatures etc. in it. I borrowed a clean copy of the yearbook from the school archives, giving them promises of a safe return.

I used Kinko's to do a professional scan and it was awful. pages were crooked and it wasn't clear. I ended up scanning it on my own scanner - page by page. It turned out very well. Due to the size of the file it made, which created a slow download, I divided it into its sections - faculty, student, seniors, activities and sports.

I recently had a discussion with Classmates.com concerning the yearbook issue. Our class (me) at this point does not want our yearbook published.

1. Anyone from a class can send in their yearbook. You have to contact Classmates first for shipping instructions.

2. They scan the entire book, cover to cover and send it back.

3. Classmates blew me off on the copyright issue, they basically said it wasn't an issue when I asked about the 70 year rule. Sorry, I just deleted their e-mail a couple of days ago so I can't specifically site their reply.

Mary

Classmates takes any yearbook. Very few people have access to clean copies so everything is scanned.

Diana Denholm wrote:

Diana,
I did mine also and they turned out very well. Separated similarly which made it easy.

Re: Copyright. I contacted the yearbook publisher and got clearance to do the copying.

As suggested before, contact your high school to borrow from their archives to get a clean book.

I did all 4 years of my yearbooks on a flatbed scanner and published it using
www.issuu.com It was about 2 years ago and it was free at that time.
It does all the things you would want zoom, page turning ect.
I had never done anything like this before but, was able to figure out how to, after many hours of expermenting with PDF and the Issuu page.
Dave

If you go back to Kyle Erickson's post of December 1, 2008, he gave directions on how to do this.

Or you can find some info under my name on February 24, 2009. There's a conversation about this there. That may provide some hints and leads.

We are in the process of cutting up yearbooks and scanning and putting on issue.com We would really like to find another place because we have to break the books down into about 25mb sections. Some of the new books are in color and have over 600 people. the files are a lot bigger that 25mb. Does anyone know of a better site?

Wow! I had bookmarked issuu awhile back but hadn't gone any further. I just went to the website and published a Samsung camera manual I had in my files as an experiment. It took 2 minutes and wah-lah, it was sent to my email address! Can't wait to try this with our Yearbooks!!! : )) Now, if my IE would just quit "not responding" when I turn the pages!

Issuu has a way to make more compact files so you can publish the entire yearbook.
Dave

I used my wife's copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare to hold them flat on my flatbed scanner. Scanned them in as JPG and then ran them through PhotoRazor to reduce the storage size. Then used PDFCreator to write them to a single PDF file which was less than 100 MB (ISSUU's limit last I knew). Then uploaded to ISSUU and used their embed code to put on my site.

Did 50 yearbooks this way, 1915 - 1965, average about 100 pages each. I know, I need to get a life. I haven't paid anything to ISSUU... must be something new.

Having 50 embedded ISSUUs on one page took forever to download so I did two things, put the older yearbooks on an "Historical Yearbook" page and even there I replaced the embed code with a JPG photo of the cover and linked it directly to the ISSUU site.

Also, a fellow classmate volunteered to give brief highlights on what was going on in the world at the time of each of the yearbooks. Another collected info on when teacher's joined the faculty, when classmates' parents were in earlier classes and even when some of our teachers graduated in earlier years.

If interested, I could open up the two pages for others to see.

I just scanned every page, one at a time, using an hp all in one fax, printer and copier machine using the scanning capabilities of a Coral based picture editing software program being run on a laptop. As I have had time, first the senior pictures were added to each of the list files corresponding to classmate names and then I scanned the rest of our yearbook. (Two seperate undertakings and both quite time consuming but worth it when posted.) It was very nice of the staff here at CC to let us post the senior shots without counting the total combined size for all of them against the limits mentioned in other threads. TYVM! When the rest of the yearbook was uploaded, all that was needed was to do so into the existing frame work of the page turning like photo album capabilities they now provide us, add some music from my hard drive and then save it and watch and listen to the finished production on CC. Both turned out great and exactly as I had anticipated and hoped.