The process of producing an Archive CD Book publication is a multi stage one, involving a lot of thought and planning. The following will give you an idea of the main stages involved in this process:

Selection
Our first task is to select a book or series of books that you might find useful in your research. Once this has been done we need to be sure that the books are suitable for handling, so the library's conservators will check and make sure that this is the case.

Imaging
Once a title has been approved for publication it has first to be digitally imaged. This is done using a Bookeye © A2 Colour Scanner. The Bookeye is not really a scanner, but uses a Planetary camera and has its own light source which emits little heat or no harmful infrared and ultra-violet light (cold lamps). This is ideal when scanning old books that can be damaged easily. All our scanning is supervised by trained archivists to ensure the books are handled correctly, and no strain is placed on the binding.
   Our Bookeye © scanner in operation.

Once imaging is complete we have a complete set of preservation images. The images are usually done at 300 DPI and in greyscale, which allows for better production of the finished publication. When necessary scans can also be done in colour. 

Making the books searchable
The digital images are then run through an OCR process. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) allows the finished publication to be searchable. After the OCR process bi-tonal versions of the images are converted to a PDF format where individual sections are bookmarked and page numbering is arranged. 

Completing the publication
Whatever supporting text necessary is added, CD cover designs are created, and you have your finished publication ready for replication.  At Archive CD Books Ireland we replicate on demand. In other words when we receive an order from you we copy the publication to CD-ROM, print a label on the cover, and print the jewel case cover. This way we don’t need to keep any stock, and can reduce all costs to you enormously.