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I assume you are referring to online scanned archives in general, not just the University of Tokyo archives mentioned in the linked post. I have been reading s
by tkgally 6y ago
I assume you are referring to online scanned archives in general, not just the University of Tokyo archives mentioned in the linked post.
I have been reading scanned books at the Internet Archive for more than ten years and have used them in some personal projects, including [1]. Like you, I have run into missing pages quite a few times, though perhaps not as frequently as you have. There are also sometimes problems with folded-over pages, blurred images, etc. If multiple scans of the same book are available, you might be able to find the missing pages in a different version.
Some of the original scanning institutions seem to have been more conscientious about the scanning process than others. The scans by the Getty Research Institute and by the Internet Archive itself, for example, seem better overall than some others. When I search for books that might be available in multiple versions, I usually add "-description:Google AND " at the beginning of the search string on the first pass to exclude Google’s scans, as they are often the worst quality.
Scanning is time-consuming and expensive when done well. Information about the Internet Archive’s scanning services is at [2] and [3]. An article about Google’s efforts is at [4].
[1] http://gally.net/jatsi/ http://gally.net/jatsi/
[2] https://archive.org/scanning https://archive.org/scanning
[3] https://archive.org/details/partnerdocs https://archive.org/details/partnerdocs
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...