Over the years, I have scanned hundreds of pages of Wayne Eagle yearbooks, using various flatbed scanners that I have owned. It is fairly tedious, as the bound books don’t often fit on the platen very well, they are hard to get straight, the center binding area is often cut-off, there are often moire effects that degrade the image, and a lot of editing often is required to get a decent image. It also puts stress on the binding of the yearbook. It is a very slow process, which is why I have only completely scanned two yearbooks to date.

I just ordered a new type of document scanner which will hopefully be much faster and easier to scan complete yearbooks. Assuming that it pans out and I scan all the yearbooks that I have in my possession, I will be looking to scan yearbooks that I don’t have here so they can be put online. I will try to contact the Ontario Historian, Ontario Public Library, and Wayne Central Library to see if what yearbooks they might have and if my system is portable enough to take on the road. My guess is that there will still be yearbooks that I cannot access, so I am hoping maybe some alumni could loan me yearbooks so they can be scanned. Yearbooks that are heavily signed may not be good subjects for scanning. I can edit out some stuff, but it would be difficult to try and edit many pages of personal text that is over photos or other text.

Local is probably best, but even shipping back and forth can work. I think I can access most of the 50s, and have many of the 60s and early 70s, so basically all yearbooks from 1977-2000 are definitely ones I don’t not have, and also anything from 2008 onward. I hope the school can help me out with these, as I don’t think too many alumni from that era are visitors here.

So watch this page, as I will put out a call for yearbooks to borrow to complete this task as I progress through this project.